LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDD3377H3A 






« 






,0 



S"^-s:. 






i 























^% 















•- "%.^^ 




% 



• 4 %■ 










o 



ZX.'^ 



ROBERT BUMS; 



A POET, AID AS A MAI 



BY SAMUEL TYLER, 

OF THE MARYLAND BAR. 



• I see her yet, the sonsie quean. 

That lighted up 1117 jingle. 
Her witching smile, her pawky een, 
That gar't my heart-siring^s tingle.' 




NEW YORK: 
BAKER AND SCRIBNER, 

36 PARK ROW & 145 NASSAU STREET. 
1848. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by 

BAKER & SCRIBNER, 

In the Clerli's Office for the Southern District of New York. 



THOMAS B. SMITH, STKRKOTYPKR, 
216 WIM.IAM STRKKT, N. Y. 



PREFACE 



There is a spirit of romance in the heart of man, that is 
ever striving after something better than the reahties of 
hfe. This spirit is alhed to the noblest faculties of the soul, 
and, as it is native to the mind, must be gratified in some 
way. There must be a literature, in which it is embodied, 
in order, by its representations, to satisfy its cravings. 
It is this spirit which writes novels ; and it is this spirit 
which reads them. And novel-reading is the literary bane 
of this age. It renders the mind superficial, and far worse, 
it renders the heart superficial. The representations of 
novels do not touch the deeper, and more solemn sympa- 
thies of the heart. Even in its highest form, the novel is 
an inferior species of literature. Easy in its naiTative, in- 
teresting in its incidents, requiring no effort to fix the atten- 
tion upon its rehearsals, it draws the mind off from the 
monotony of life, and pleases for the moment. But when 
the fictitious visions pass from before the eyes, there is 
nothing of permanent truth left, in either the mind or the 
heart. We pass into an apathy like that after a revel. 

The same spirit which thus dissipates itself in novels, 
finds its ti-uest and noblest gratification in poetry. And 
once let the heart be touched, by the high revelations of the 
sublime, the beautiful, the s^ood, and the divine, which poe- 



IV 1' 11 I<: F ACE. 

try mates known, and the meagre, the superficial, the less 
true representations of the nove], will lose their undue fasci- 
nation. Poetry is the very highest form of literature. It 
is in fact the noblest, by far, of all the arts. Sculpture, 
painting, and music, all combined, are but a faint expression 
of the human soul, in comparison with poetry. So far 
above those of other men, are the thoughts and the diction 
of the poet, that in all ages he has been said to be inspired. 
A special gift of divinity has been thought to be vouchsafed 
to him. When God put the harp into the hand of David, 
he conferred greater glory, than when he put upon him the 
crown of royal power. We of this generation, are still un- 
der the spell of the harp, but the power of the crown is 
gone forever. And old Homer ! when will his power die ? 
And the glory of Italy, is Dante. His great soul fills his 
country with celestial light. And there is Shakspeare ! 
How England rises in glory at his name ! The world is 
full of poetry. The heavens, the earth, and the sea, have 
each their poetry. And God has given to these men the 
power to interpret it ; and blending it with the richness of 
their own souls, to shadow it forth to ordinary men. Phi- 
losophers and poets are sent into the world to teach and 
exalt duller minds. If it were not for these great teachers, 
the race of men would ever be barbarous. Strike out of 
human histor}^ all the works of genius, and take away from 
human culture all their influence, and how humble would 
be every page. The philosopher forms the opinions of the 
world, the poet forms their sentiments. The one wields 
his prerogatives over the mind, the other over the heart. 
And what is the human heart ? On one side is heaven, on 
the other is hell. Over this bright, and over this gloomy 
region the poet wields his prerogatives. It is with the 
heart in its joys, and in its sorrows, in its pride and in its 



r R E F A C E . ^ 

humiliation, that the poet has to deal. It is no wonder 
then, that poets have always been the best beloved of a 
nation's great minds. His spell is upon the heart. In 
youth, when love kindles its first flame upon the altar of 
the heart, poetry breathes its soft breath upon it, and gives 
it a heavenly warmth. And it gives a fragrance and a 
beauty to every flower of joy that blooms in the happy 
vales of that early period, and paints in brightest hues of 
hope the horizon of the future. And it constantly whispers 
into the ear of youth all those little joys it likes to hear. 
if tells the heart its own secrets of love, better than it 
knows them itself. And this is what Robert Burns has 
done better than any poet. He has depicted the senti- 
ments of the youthful heart, with a power truly divine. 
He realized in his own soul more fully than any other man, 
the ideal perfection of human love. And this selfish age 
should be taught this sweetest mystery of the heart. The 
necessities of life are so continually impressing men with 
the value of utilitarian considerations, that the heart loses 
its generous tenderness. From this sordid state of the af- 
fections, love is the best preservative : for when its youth- 
ful freshness has passed away in the heart's slower pulses, 
it is still the central flame that warms all the affections. 
If therefore, I have succeeded in drawing attention to this 
pecuhar feature of Burns's poetry, while I have given due 
consideration to the others, I have done what I designed to 
do and deem it sufficient apology for having written an- 
other work on Burns, when so many abler minds have done 
so but have not given so much prominence to this pecuhar 
feature, which is so characteristic of the poet. And 1 have 
further endeavored to defend Burns, as a man, from false 
opinions of him. It will be seen, that when he was about 
to die he felt deep concern for his fame, not only as a poet, 



VI PREFACE. 

but as a man. He felt, at that moment, when the soul of- 
ten realizes, in an extraordinary degree, all its worth, what 
Cicero has so beautifully described in his oration for the 
poet Archias. " Nor ought we," says Cicero, " to dissemble 
this truth, which cannot be concealed, but declare it openly : 
we are all influenced by the love of praise, and the greatest 
minds have the greatest passion for glory. The philoso- 
phers themselves prefix their names to those books which 
they write upon contempt of glory ; by which they show 
that they are desirous of praise and fame, while they affect 
to despise them. For virtue desires no other reward, for 
her toils and dangers, but praise and glory : take but this 
away, and what is there left in this short, this scanty career 
of human life, that can tempt us to engage in so many and 
so great labdrs ? Surely, if the mind had no thought of 
futurity, if she confined all her views within those limits 
which bound our present existence, she would neither waste 
her strength on so great toils, nor harass herself with so 
many cares and watchings, nor struggle so often for life it- 
self ; but there is a certain principle in the breast of every 
good man, which both day and night quickens him to the 
pursuit of glory, and puts him in mind that fame is not to 
be measured by the extent of his present life, but that it 
runs parallel with the fine of posterity." 



CONTENTS. 



THE THEORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL, 



FAQE 

9 



BURNS AS A POET, ^^ 

BURNS AS A MAN, 1^2 



BURNS AS A POET. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE THEORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 

It has long since been heard, all over the civilized 
world, that there appeared in Scotland in the last 
half of the eighteenth century, a great poet, in the 
person of an Ayrshire ploughman, by the name of 
Robert Burns. And as illustrious as is Scotland 
in great men, there is not another, who has produced 
so deep an impression on the universal heart of his 
country, as this same Ayrshire ploughman. Of this 
extraordinary person, I propose to give some account. 
I will first speak of him as a poet, and then, as a 
man. 

Before, however, I speak of him as a poet, I will 
propound my view of the theory of the Beautiful, in 
order that I may, thereby, be the better able to lay 
open the mystery of his fascination. For he was 
emphatically the poet of the Beautiful. 

The world was evidently designed as the dwelling- 
place of a being who delights in scenes of beauty. 
For the Creator has taken as much care to make 



10 ROBERT BURNS. 

every thing beautiful, as ho has to make every thing 
useful. Utility and beauty are worked into harmony 
everywhere. Beauty seems to stand midway be- 
tween utility and holiness. It is the sympathy with 
beauty, which draws out the heart, and elevates it 
above considerations of self, and prepares it for as- 
pirations after holiness. If there were nothing but 
utility impressed upon nature, man, bound down by 
considerations of self, would scarcely have aspirations 
beyond those of the brute. For he is not more dis- 
tinguished from the brute, by his perception of the 
moral, than he is by his perception of the beautiful. 
Indeed, of all the natural influences which sway the 
soul for good, there is none more potent than beauty. 
It was beauty in nature operating upon the suscep- 
tible Greek mind, that enabled it to catch the divine 
lineaments of the beautiful and embody them in art. 
And art, thus embodying the ideal beauty derived 
from nature, in turn re-acted upon the Greek mind 
itself, and elevated it above that of all ancient nations, 
and it has continued to this day to refine nations, by 
kindling in them the sympathy with the beautiful. 
The Greek mind never could have been what it was, 
but for the beauty of its language, its literature, its 
sculpture, and its architecture ; for though these are 
all the product of the mind itself, yet they are all 
powerful instruments of improvement when they 
embody real beauty in their artistic forms. Inde- 
pendently then of our present purpose, it is certainly 
a matter of importance to unfold the tJieory of the 



AS A POET 



11 



beautiful, in order that we may thereby, the better 
understand how to combine its elements in the ar- 
tistic organizations of literature and the other arts. 

It may perhaps be thought presumptuous, that I 
should try my unskilled hand upon the theory of the 
beautiful, after so many masters have failed in efforts 
to discover and set it forth : that I should hope to 
embrace ideal beauty in my arms, when she has re- 
jected the solicitations of so many illustrious suitors : 
that I should attempt to raise the veil from off her 
face, when it has never been given to mortal man to 
view the glory of her countenance. I confess it all ! 
But I have been so fascinated by her loveliness as it 
appears reflected in the works of nature, that my 
anxious heart has forced me to the attempt. I 
longed to know the theory of that fascination which 
breathes from the works of nature. To learn the 
origin of that spell, which always seemed to me so 
near akin to the great sympathy which binds to- 
gether the hearts of man and woman. For, in 
walking amidst the beauties of nature, there is al- 
ways the image of a beautiful woman, associated in 
my imagination, with them all : — 

" I see her in the dewy flowers, 
I see her sweet and fair ; 
I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 
I hear her charm the air." 

This delightful mystery T shall now attempt to un- 
veil. 



12 ROBERT BURNS. 

And let me begin by asking a question. Why is 
it that man, and the brute animals, draw such dif- 
ferent conclusions from their observations of the ma- 
terial world ? The brutes have just as acute senses 
as he. They can see with as keen an eye, and hear 
with as accurate an ear. There is not a quality of 
matter which they cannot see, nor a quality of sound 
which they cannot hear. The difference results from 
the difference in their mental constitutions. All 
that man beholds in the material world which the 
brute does not see, is transferred there from the 
truths of his own spiritual nature. Man throws 
over the material world, the glories of his own soul. 
The beautiful, no less than the moral, belongs to the 
soul of man. 

This is the great truth, by which T shall endeavor 
to raise the veil of mystery, which hangs over the 
beauty of nature. I expect to show that the beauty 
which we behold in nature, is mirrored there from 
the radiations of our own spirits. That it is not the 
dull matter which warms the currents of feeling: 
within our bosoms ; but it is a halo of our own 
spiritual being lingering around these objects, and 
imparting to them a significance which they do not 
possess inherent in their own natures. 

In order to give a precise notion of my theory of 
the beautiful, it will be necessary to give my view 
of the theory of the sublime. 

My theory is, that the sublimity of the material 
world, is derived from associations with man and his 



ASAPOET. 13 

spiritual characteristics ; and that the beauty of the 
material world, is derived from associations with 
woman and her spiritual characteristics. 

" For contemplation he, and valor formed, 
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace." 

The qualities of sublime objects are masculine : 
those of beautiful objects are feminine. 

With these preliminary observations, I will now 
proceed to unfold the theory of the beautiful. 

In the first place, I will define what I mean by 
the beautiful. Many writers make the beautiful to 
consist in whatever of external nature produces an 
agreeable impression within us ; thus making the 
beautiful identical with the agreeable. But this is 
not the meaning that I shall attach to the word. 
These writers speak of the beauty of mechanical 
contrivances, the beauty of mathematical problems, 
and apply the term to other similar instances. But 
I exclude all such instances from my view of the 
subject. What I mean by the beautiful, is what- 
ever, in the material world, produces impressions 
within us analogous to those awakened by our in- 
tercourse with woman. In fact, as I have already 
announced, I make woman the spiritual dispenser 
of beauty to the world. As the fabled Prometheus 
brought down fire and fertility from heaven, to ani- 
mate and fertilize the earth, so woman brought down 
beauty and love, to warm the heart of man, and 
make the flowers of bliss bloom along the streams 



14 ROBERTBIIRNS. 

of feeling, as they flow from their spontaneous foun- 
tains. But let me here distinctly announce, that I 
do not make the beauty of material objects to con- 
sist in mere accidental and arbitrary associations 
with woman, though these are a source of their 
beauty : but I make their beauty to consist in those 
associations which are founded on the analogies, 
or resemblances, that are felt to exist, between the 
qualities of certain physical objects and the charac- 
teristics of woman. For there are some material 
objects which possess a peculiar capability of being 
associated with the spiritual characteristics of 
woman. For instance, a rose-bush, blushing in the 
dews of a spring morning, will produce upon us an 
impression of such a nature, as to cause us to per- 
sonify it as a female, and to speak of it, as the 
blushing rose ; and to apply to it other epithets, 
which have a real significance only when applied to 
woman. That the rose-bush in bloom has a pecu- 
liar fitness, an adaptiveness by its very constitution, 
to produce this impression, I cannot doubt. It is an 
adaptation between external physical nature, and 
the spiritual constitution of man. But yet, if wo- 
man had never been created, this impression could 
not have suggested to man her charms, and conse- 
quently, would not have had any thing like its pres- 
ent power over his heart. For it is undoubtedly to 
this suggestion, that it owes most of the influence 
which we term its beauty. And such is the case, 
with all other material things that are beautiful. 



AP A POET. 15 

They are suggestive of some tender sentiment ; 
because they possess a peculiar fitness for being as- 
sociated with the sentiment : on account of the fact, 
that they, of themselves, impress the mind with a 
vague feeling analogous to the sentiment. The 
principle of this impression may be thus explained. 
Suppose you hear a strain of melancholy music, and 
you listen to the tune until it " untwist all the 
chains that tie the hidden soul of harmony." You 
may have no definite truth in your mind, producing 
the effects of sadness which you experience. It 
may be nothing but the luxury of feeling awakened 
purely by the accord of sweet sounds. So, if you 
look out on a soft moonlight scene, you Vvdll have 
impressions produced upon you very much like those 
produced by the music. A vague melancholy feel- 
ing will come over you. Now, in this case, as well 
as in that of the music, our souls are impressed by 
external material things acting on us through our 
senses, without the association of any sentiment. 
But then, we have so many sentiments akin to these 
states of feeling produced by the music and the 
moonlight, that they are readily suggested and as- 
sociated with the music and the moonlight, giving 
to both a borrowed power. And just so it is with 
every beautiful object in nature. They all possess 
a power inherent in then* constitutions, to produce 
in us a vague feeling of sweetness that hangs about 
the heart, until sentiments analogous to the feeling 
are suggested, and become associated with the ob- 



16 ROBERT BURNS. 

jects giving them their own significance, — imparting 
to them their own beauty. 

Now, all these sentiments, which are thus associ- 
ated with beautiful objects, and which these objects 
have a natural fitness for expressing, are those 
which woman is specially formed for awakening ; 
and all these objects are therefore associated with 
woman, borrowing her beauty. This truth I will 
now proceed to prove and illustrate. 

Let us look for our proofs and illustrations, into 
that great mirror, where all the beautiful objects of 
nature are reflected in the exact impressions which 
they make upon the heart of man : I mean poetry. 
For, it is in its descriptions, that we can see in 
what way beautiful objects affect the mind of man. 
And its descriptions embrace every thing in nature 
that, has a winning grace, from the beauty of the 
morning down to the loneliest flower meekly blush- 
ing in the dewy light. This is the true mode of 
examining the subject which experimental philos- 
ophy points out. 

How then, have poets described the morning, that 
most beautiful period of the day ? Milton says, — 

" Now morn, her rosy steps in the Eastern clime, 
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearls." 

And again, 

" Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, 
With charms of earliest birds." 



AS A POET. 17 

In both these descriptions, the chief beauty consists 
in personifying the morning as a woman. In no 
other way could that period of the day be set forth 
with such exquisite effect. And it is not the mighty 
genius of Milton alone that has thrown over morning 
the beauty of woman. Thomson has said, 

" The meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews." 

In what other form could poetry give greater charms 
to its descriptions of morning ? If there were any 
other more fascinating form, the graphic genius of 
Shakspeare would reveal it, from the rich abundance 
of his vast resources. But in his highest and divin- 
est imaginings, he clothes morning in conceptions of 
beauty borrowed from the charms of woman : — 

" But look, the mom in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o'er the dew of yon high Eastern hill." 



And again. 



" Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day, 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 

Those touchingly beautiful descriptions of morning 
are its highest ideal possible in poetry. Genius can 
never accomplish any thing beyond them. Homer 
employed the same form of description : — 

" Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn, 
Sprmlded with rosy light the dewy lawn." 

And how do poets describe the most beautiful of 
the seasons ? Thomson says, — 



18 ROBERT RURNS. 

" Come, gentle spring, ethereal mildness come, 
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, 
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower 
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend." 

This description of spring seems borrowed from 
Dante's description, in the thirtieth canto of " Pur- 
gatory," of his beloved Beatrice descending from 
heaven to lead him to " Paradise." 



thus in a cloud 



Of flowers, that from those hands angelic rose, 

And down within and outside of the car. 

Fell showering, in white veil with olive wreath'd 

A virgin in my view appear'd, beneath 

Green mantle, rob'd in hue of living flame : 

And o'er my spirit, that so long a time, 

Had from her presence felt no shudd'ring dread, 

Albeit, mine eyes discern'd her not, there mov'd 

A hidden virtue from her, at whose touch 

The power of ancient love was strong within me." 

Thomson has in fact borrowed the charms of Bea- 
trice to beautify the spring. But even if the descrip- 
tion be original with Thomson, it equally illustrates 
my theory of the beautiful. For Thomson has de- 
scribed spring just as Dante did Beatrice. And thus 
the beauty of Beatrice lives in this description by 
Thomson. The peculiar beauty of the description 
is a radiance left by her lovely person and spirit on 
this earth, whose horizon she appeared in just long 
enough to captivate the great soul of Dante, and 
awaken within him the intuitions of beauty and the 
passion of love, and like a meteor to pass away. 



AS A POET. 19 

Thomson again says of spring, 

" While from his ardent look, the burning spring 
Averts her blushful look." 

And Burns, in his Elegy on Thomson, thus speaks 
of spring : — 

" While virgin Spring, by Eden's flood 
Unfolds her tender mantle green, 
Or pranks the sod, in frolic mood, 
Or tunes JEolian strains between." 

And on another occasion, Burns says, 

" Now rosy May comes in with flowers, 
To deck her gay, green-spreading bowers." 

And every poet, when he wishes to present spring in 
its highest beauty, clothes it in the charms of wo- 
man. Spenser says, 

" Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground, 
Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride. 
And throwing flowers out of her lap around." 

And the moon, as she walks forth in her mild 
beauty, is always described by poets as a woman. 
Shakspeare says, 

" Where Phoebe doth behold 
Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, 
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass." 

And Milton says, 

" till the moon. 

Rising in clouded majesty, at length, 

unveil'd her peerless light, 

And o'er the world her silver mantle threw." 



20 ROB ERTB URNS. 

And he says again, 

" To behold the wandering moon, 
Riding near her highest noon, 
Like one that has been led astray, 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way. 
And oft as if her head she bow'd. 
Stooping through a fleecy cloud." 

And Burns, speaking of the moon, says, 

" Now Phoebe in her midnight reign, 
Dark muffled, view'd the dewy plain." 

And when we look at the descriptions by poets 
of the flowers that smile so modestly amidst the glo- 
ries of nature, we find them weaving around them 
associations borrowed from woman. Prior thus 
speaks of the cowslip : — 

" The cowslip smiles, in brighter yellow drest, 
Than that which veils the nubile virgin's breast." 

Read Burns's Address to a Mountain Daisy, and 
see how the associations with woman cluster in the 
sentiments : — 

" Wee, modest crimson-tipped flow'r, 
Thou's met me in an evil hour ; 
For I maun crush amang the stoure 
Thy tender stem ; 

***** • 

" Thou in thy scanty mantle clad. 
Thy snawy bosom sun-ward spread, 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 
In humble guise ; 



AS A POET. 21 

But now the share uptears thy bed, 
And low thou lies !" 

" Such is the fate of artless maid, 
Sweet Jlow\et of the rural shade ! 
By love's simplicity betray'd, 

And guiless trust. 
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid, 

Low i' the dust. 

Take out of this poem the sentiments and associ- 
ations of woman that are interwoven in it, and you 
take away all its beauty. And how beautifully are 
the associations between flowers and woman exem- 
plified in this song by Burns. 

" Adown winding Nith, I did wander. 

To mark the sweet flowers as they spring ; 
Adown winding Nith I did wander, 
Of Phillis to muse and to sing. 

The daisy amus'd my fond fancy. 

So artless, so simple, so wild ; 
Thou emblem, said I, o' my Phillis, 

For she is simplicity's child. 

The rose-bud's the blush o' my charmer, 

Her sweet balmy lip when 'tis prest : 
How fair and how pure is the lily. 

But fairer and purer her breast ! 

Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbor, 

They ne'er wi' my Phillis can vie : 
Her breath is the breath o' the woodbine. 

Its dewdrop o' diamond, her eye. 

Her voice is the song of the morning. 
That wakes thro' the green-spreading grove, 



22 ROBERTBURNS. 

When PhcEbus peeps over the mountains, 
On music, and pleasure, and love. 

But beauty, how frail and how fleeting, 

The bloom of a fine summer's day ! 
While worth, in the mind o' my Phillis, 

Will flourish without a decay." 

But why need I multiply examples, when the read- 
er's memory can furnish him with a thousand in- 
stances where poets have personified beautiful ob- 
jects as woman ? It has been done in all ages, all 
countries, and in all literatures. Because the same 
analogies on which the personifications are founded, 
have been visible to the eye of the poet in all ages, 
and the mind, by the necessary laws of association, 
clothes the objects in the beauty of woman. 

But it is not only in the actual personifications, 
that the association of material objects with the 
beauty of woman is indicated. The whole language 
of poetry indicates the same fact. The golden 
thread of woman's beauty is interwoven through all 
its richest diction. The choicest epithets are in- 
stinct with the lovely characteristics of her soul. 
Her modesty, her innocence, her blushes of purity, 
her delicacy of sentiment, and her other charms, all 
breathe in the epithets applied to the flowers of the 
field. The modest violet, the innocent lily, the 
blushing rose, the delicate myrtle, are all inspired 
by woman's winning sentiments. And even the rich 
gems of diamond, and topaz, and jasper, and pearl, 
that hang in costly lustre around her person, derive 



ASAPOET. 23 

their beauty from her charms, as the epithets ap- 
phed to their qualities, clearly show. Indeed, look 
where we may, throughout that panoramic view of 
nature's beauties which poetry presents, and we see 
a halo of woman's beauty hanging around them all, 
giving to them their power of sympathy over the 
human heart. The epithets applied to them are the 
expression of what the poet's heart feels ; and what 
he feels, are the sentiments which the peculiar 
graces of woman are specially designed to awaken. 
There is a mysterious analogy, as I have already 
shown, between these material objects and the quali- 
ties of woman ; and they are therefore bound toge- 
ther in the linked sweetness of association. It is in 
fact, upon these delicate analogies between animate 
and inanimate things, between the beautiful things 
of the material world, and the person and soul of 
woman, that those winning similes are founded, 
which give such ravishing power to poetry. CaU 
to mind, for instance, the lines addressed by Burns 
to Miss Cruikshank : — 

" Beauteous rose-bud, young and gay, 
Blooming on thy early May, 
Never may'st thou, lovely flower, 
Chilly shrink in sleety shower ! 
Never Boreas' hoary path, 
Never Eurus' pois'nous breath, 
Never baleful stellar lights 
Taint thee with untimely blights ! 
Never, never reptile thief 
Riot on thy virgin leaf ! 



24 ROBERTBURNS. 

Nor even Sol too fiercely view 
Thy bosom blushing still with dew ! 

May'st thou long, sweet crimson gem, 
Richly deck thy native stem ; 
Till some ev'ning, sober, calm, 
Dropping dews, and breathing balm. 
While all around the woodland rings, 
And every bird thy requiem sings, 
Thou amid the dirgeful sound, 
Shed thy dying honors round, 
And resign to parent earth. 
The loveliest form she e'er gave birth." 

In this beautiful allegory, how the delicate analo- 
gies between a young girl and a rose-bud are seized 
upon, by those intuitions of the poet, which enable 
him to read in nature the most delicate expressions 
of hidden sentiment, and are woven together with 
the thread of associations into a master-piece of 
poetic fancy ! And how all the evils of life which 
beset the path of a young girl, are likened, through 
the analogies which a poet sees, to the winds, the 
untimely blights, the reptiles and other things which 
destroy flowers, and all accommodated by the plas- 
tic power of genius to the personification of the young 
girl as a rose-bud ! And with what a strong mean- 
ing do the analogies sustain the allegory to the end ! 
Now, it was Miss Cruikshank who awakened in the 
soul of Burns, that inspiration which called up all 
the analogies of this poem. " Kindling his soul into 
poetic ardor, his fancy filled with her youth and. 
beauty, he associates her with the rose-bud ; and 



AS A POET. 25 

though a superficial reader may at first think it is 
the rose-bud giving charms to the young girl, yet it 
is manifest, that it is she who gives her charms to 
the mere sign and emblem of her youth and beauty. 
And whoever is peculiarly susceptible to the beauty 
of woman, is also peculiarly susceptible to those 
things in nature, which produce impressions analo- 
gous to the sentiments awakened by the beauty of 
woman, and which lead us to associate these senti- 
ments with those things, and to personify them. 
And such was Burns. Indeed, Burns saw in nature 
so many poetic analogies suggestive of woman, and 
borrowing by association her charms, that he has 
uttered as a poetic conceit, the truth which I am 
now propounding, as a great eesthetical doctrine ; 

" But woman, nature's darling child, 
There all her charms she does compile !" 

And it was the exquisitely delicate intuition by 
which he saw these poetic analogies, that constituted 
the faculty by which he wrought the witchery of the 
spell, that he has thrown over the hearts of men, 
binding them in the blissful sympathy with the beau- 
tiful. This is the mysterious secret of his power. 
This, the divine rod by which he smites the stoniest 
hearts and makes waters of sweetness flow out. In 
fact, it was woman who was his inspiring muse. 
The first poetic impulse ever felt within him, was 
awakened by a young girl, his partner in the har- 
vest field. In speaking of it, he says, — 
2 



26 ROBERT BURNS. 

" But still the elements o' sang 
In formless jumble, right an' wrang, 

Wild floated in my brain ; 
Till on that hairst I said before, 
My partner in the merry core. 

She rous'd the forming strain : 
I see her yet, the sonsie quean. 

That lighted up my jingle, 
Her witching smile, her pauky een. 

That gart my heart-strings tingle." 

And in a letter to George Thomson, inclosing a song 
for publication, he says : "I assure you that to my 
lovely young friend, you are indebted for many of 
my best songs. Do you think that the sober, gin- 
horse routine of existence, could inspire a man with 
life, and love, and joy — could fire him with enthusi- 
asm, or melt him with pathos equal to the genius of 
your book ? No ! no ! Whenever I want to be more 
than ordinary in song — to be in some degree equal 
to your diviner airs — do you imagine I fast and pray 
for the celestial emanation ? Tout au contraire ! 
I have a glorious recipe — the very one that, for his 
own use, was invented by the god of healing and 
poetry, when erst he piped to the flocks of Adme- 
tus. I put myself in a regimen of admiring a fine 
woman, and in proportion to the adorability of her 
charms, in proportion you are delighted with my 
verses. The lightning of her eye is the godhead of 
Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile, the divin- 
ity of Helicon." This hasty and facetious effusion 



A S A P O E T . 27 

of the moment, is in reality, the revelation of the 
true secret of Burns's poetic power. 

But let me not, amidst the variety of my proofs 
and illustrations, lose the thread of my theory. It 
is not the mere form of woman that inspires us, any 
more than it is the mere form of other objects which 
impress us with beauty. For as captivating as is 
the external form of woman, with all its refined and 
untraceable fitnesses, still how infinitely less glorious 
is it than the soul within, which wooes, and wins, and 
fills, and purifies, and hallows, and exalts the heart 
of man, until bound in a spell of bliss so ineftable, he 
feels that the winning graces which come so artlessly 
from the purity of the female heart, are a holy witch- 
ery bestowed by the Creator, for the very purpose of 
holding him fast in the ennobling thrall. But the 
female form itself is only the language of the soul, 
the medium through which it communicates its 
thoughts, its feelings, its emotions, its love ; for every 
part of the form breathes forth expression. Even 
the foot has its expression, and its own tale of senti- 
ment to tell. The heart is the sculptor of both the 
face and the form, moving and moulding it with its 
every emotion ; and the changes that are wrought 
out in the ever-varying sculpture, are adapted by the 
Creator to express the various emotions of the heart, 
through all the fluctuations of sentiment and thought. 

This, then, is the great truth which lies at the 
foundation of the theory of the beautiful : The beauty 
of every object in the material icorld is th.Q expres- 



28 R O B E R T 13 i; R N S . 

sion of some feminine sentiment. The rose has ex- 
pression, the lily has expression, the violet has expres- 
sion, the myrtle has expression, and so has every 
object in nature. They have no soul moving within 
them, it is true. Neither has the sculptured marble 
a soul v^ithin it ; yet it breathes forth the beauty of 
the Venus de Medici, and the Greek Slave. Neither 
has the lifeless corpse a soul stirring within it, yet 
no one will deny that it has expression : — 

" Who hath bent him o'er the dead, 
Ere the first day of death is fled, 
Before decay's effacing fingers 
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, 
And mark'd the mild angelic air, 
The rapture of repose that's there, 
The fix'd, yet tender traits that streak 
The languor of the placid cheek, 
And — but for that sad shrouded eye. 
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, 
And but for that chill changeless brow. 
Where cold obstruction's apathy. 
Appals the gazing mourner's heart, 
As if to him, it could impart 
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon: 
Yes, but for these, and these alone, 
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, 
He still might doubt the tyrant's power ; 
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd, 
The first, last look, by death reveal'd." 

There is connected with each passion, a material 
machinery subservient to its expression ; and this 
machinery, even when at rest, speaks to our sympa- 



ASAPOET. 29 

thies. It is this mysterious adaptiveness of matter 
moulded into form, to express the various manifesta- 
tions of woman's spirit, that constitutes the beauty 
of material objects. It is the sentiment expressed 
by them with which we sympathize. For spirit can 
sympathize only with spirit. To a thing that ex- 
presses nothing, the heart must of necessity be indif- 
ferent. There is nothing in it for the heart either to 
speak to or to respond to. And consequently, there 
can be no sympathy between them. 

From the theory of the beautiful, which I have 
attempted to expound, I will now deduce a rule of 
criticism that will be of service to us when we come 
to examine the poetry of Burns. 

If the beauty of material objects, as I have en- 
deavored to show, consists in associations by which 
Ihey become the symbols of some sentiment of wo- 
man, then that must be the highest order of poetry, 
which expresses these sentiments with the least in- 
tervention of material imagery ; for it is the naked 
sentiments which possess the power of affecting our 
souls, and the freer they are from all material cloth- 
ing, the mightier is their spell of sympathy over the 
heart. This is certainly so. And all the greatest 
poets, and Burns among the number, have possessed, 
in an extraordinary degree, the power of embodying 
their passions and sentiments in mere words, with- 
out the necessity of calling to mind material objects, 
with which the passions and sentiments are associat- 
ed. It is, nevertheless, true, that material imagery 



30 ROBERTBURNS. 

is one of the most powerful means of poetic effect, 
and has therefore its necessary place in the true art 
of poetry. But the greatest poets and orators never 
give it the highest place in their poetry and their elo- 
quence. Their most divine conceptions have been 
clothed in diction, as simple and as transparent as 
light. You never see about their work, that suf- 
focating profusion of metaphor which second-rate 
minds throw around their productions. The nature 
of material imagery, it appears to me, has not been 
very accurately analyzed. The associations by which 
it produces its effect have been lost sight of by critics, 
and the material imagery of its own inherent power, 
has been supposed to work the whole impression upon 
the soul. And therefore, the associations — the soul 
stirring within the material imagery — have been lost 
sight of in the principles of their criticism. And al- 
though it has ever been felt, that the poetry and the 
eloquence which expresses passions and sentiments 
directly and immediately in words, is of a higher 
order than that which expresses them by the inter- 
vention of material imagery, yet no reason founded 
in the nature of the human mind, and the theory of 
the impressions of external objects upon it, has here- 
tofore been given for the effect. From the fact, that 
poets often employ material imagery to give vivid 
impressions of the emotions of the soul, critics have 
seemed to infer, that the material imagery, by its 
own inherent power, imparts, by the comparison, a 
greatness to the emotions described ; and that the 



AS A POET. 31 

whole effect is produced in this way. But this is a 
fundamental error ; for this very material imagery 
derives its chief power, from being associated with 
the emotions wliich it is used to illustrate. For in- 
stance, 

" As in the bosom of the stream, 
The moonbeam plays at dewy e'en. 
So trembling pure, was infant love 
Within the breast of bonnie Jean." 

In this beautiful simile, which Burns has used to de- 
scribe the first impulse of love in the youthful heart, 
we are apt to suppose, at first thought, that it is the 
moonbeam in the stream, which heightens, by its 
own inherent power alone, the beauty of the love in 
the breast of the maiden. But it is just the reverse. 
It was bonnie Jean who awakened, in the bosom of 
the poet, all the conceptions ; and the pure love in 
her breast, he expressed by the beautiful imagery of 
a moonbeam in the bosom of a stream. But the 
image of a moonbeam in the bosom of a stream, de- 
rives its poetic power from the association ; for its 
poetic beauty is not felt until we read on to the in- 
fant love in the breast of the maiden, to which it is 
compared. Then, but not till then, the moonbeam 
in the bosom of the stream is clothed in magical 
beauty. The beauty of the infant love is trans- 
ferred to it and consubstantiated with it, and the 
beautiful poetic analogy, which is felt to exist be- 
tween them, exalts our idea of both. But it is the 
infant love, the associated sentiment, that is the soul 



32 ROBERTBURNS. 

of the picture, giving it its warmth and its fascina- 
tion. This example affords a fair illustration of the 
nature of the effect of all material imagery upon the 
heart of man. It is the associated sentiments that 
give to the material imagery its poetic power, al- 
though the imagery is employed to illustrate the 
sentiments ; for we never feel the full beauty of the 
imagery until the sentiments which it is intended to 
illustrate are revealed to our minds, and all the poetic 
analogies between the sentiments and the imagery 
are clearly seen. Then we take fire. Then we are 
w^ooed and won. 

Another beautiful illustration of this point, just 
occurs to me, from Burns. 

" As on the brier, the budding rose, 
Still richer breathes, and fairer blows, 
So in my tender bosom grows, 
The love I bear my Willy." 

It is the love growing in the tender bosom of the 
maiden that constitutes the soul of this picture, and 
imparts its own warmth to " the budding rose, that 
richer breathes, and fairer blows." It is always the 
sentiment that gives to the imagery the life, the 
fragrance, the magic hues, in a word, the beauty 
that captivates our hearts. 

I have, I hope, sufficiently laid open the theory of 
the beautiful, to enable us to enter upon the consid- 
eration of Burns as a poet. This we will do in the 
next chapter ; and I tliink, we shall see the theory 



AS A POET. 



33 



which I have propounded, clearly exemplified in his 
poetry. For, as I have said. Burns was emphati- 
cally the poet of the beautiful ; and we may there- 
fore expect to see him catching his inspiration from 
the source of beauty that I have unveiled, that we 
might behold the loveliness of her countenance, be- 
fore we enter upon the examination of the poetry 
of Burns, where merely her image is mirrored. 
2* 



34 



ROBERT BURNS. 



CHAPTER II. 

If the rising superior to the difficulties of life, and 
accomplishing much under the greatest disadvan- 
tages, be an evidence of genius, then was Robert 
Burns a great poet. For no man was ever born in a 
more prosaic condition of life. Every thing near him, 
and every thing around him, was as dull as human 
life ever furnishes. Poor, and under the continual 
pressure of bodily toil, the present was always dreary ; 
and when he looked to the future, the worst forebod- 
ings of coming evils could not but cast a hue of des- 
pondency over the path that lay before him. With no 
mental culture but what falls to the lot of the chil- 
dren of want all over Scotland, with no models of art 
but such as belong to the hovels of the poor, with no 
better standards of the beautiful in thought and dic- 
tion than the poetry of Allan Ramsay, with no exam- 
ples of polite manners but those of an unlettered 
peasantry, his condition seemed to be the very one 
where thought and feeling must languish and expire. 
But the irrepressible energies of genius can conquer 
even these difficulties. The self-conscious spirit, de- 
veloping and strengthening in the movements of its 
own irrepressible impulses, rises above the obscuritv 



AS A POET. S5 

of its earthly condition, and, catching a strain from 
that harp of eternal melodies which the ear of genius 
can always hear, quickens in its divinity, and is 
inspired to see ideal beauty in every province of na- 
ture, and in every condition of human life, and to 
depict it in the divine words of song. But then there 
must have been something amidst this general dreari- 
ness, that tuned the heart of Burns aright, and awak- 
ened within him a sympathy of pleasure with reality, 
before the wings of fancy were lent him, to soar up 
to the region of the ideal, there to refresh and exalt 
his spirit at the fountains of absolute beauty and ab- 
solute truth, and to bring down the dews upon his 
wings that were to beautify every thing in nature, 
upon which they might fall as he flew over the scenes 
of life. He has told us himself what this was. " You 
know (says he) our country custom of coupling a man 
and a wom.an together as partners in the labor of 
harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a 
bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. 
My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing 
her justice in that language ; she was a bonnie, sweet, 
sonsie lass. In short, she altogether unwittingly to 
herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, 
in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, 
and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of 
human joys, our sweetest blessing here below. How 
she caught Ihe contagion I could not tell. You medi- 
cal people talk much of infection from breathing the 
same air, the touch, &c., but I never expressly said 



36 ROBERT BURNS. 

I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I 
liked so much to loiter behind with her, when return- 
ing in the evening from our labors ; why the tones 
of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an 
jEolian harp ; and particularly, why my pulse beat 
such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over 
her little hands, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings 
and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring quali- 
ties, she sang sweetly ; and it was a favorite reel to 
which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in 
rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine 
that I could make verses like printed ones, composed 
by men who had Greek and Latin ; but my girl sang 
a song which was said to be composed by a small 
country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with 
whom he was in love ; and I saw no reason why I 
might not rhyme as well as he ; for excepting that 
he could smear sheep and cast peats, his father liv- 
ing on the moor lands, he had no more scholar craft 
than myself. Tims ivith me begem love and poetry.'''' 
This one passage of autobiography, lights up the 
mystery that hangs over the life of Burns. It was 
woman, the impersonation of beauty, that first awak- 
ened within him a consciousness of his own powers, 
that first attuned his ear to hear the strains of the 
eternal harmonies that flow from the harp of nature. 
And now his heart begins to feel its own inborn riches. 
The fountains of its love are opened, and flow out 
over universal nature, making the bleakest provinces 
bloom in beauty. Nature's barp, and the harp of 



AS A POET. 37 

his soul, are attuned to one melody ; and he is happy 
in the peace which an active obedience to one's con- 
dition always begets. His father's toil-worn family 
has now a radiance shed down upon it from the re- 
gion of ideal truth ; and he, seeing it in this light, 
dips his pencil in the colors of his heart, and presents 
the scene to the world in the beautiful picture of the 
" Cotter's Saturday Night." And the ideal light 
which now beamed in his eye, lent its beauty to every 
thing. The " Daisy" which is upturned by his plough- 
share, is clothed in new beauty, and he sets forth 
that beauty, and the sympathies of his heart that are 
awakened by it, in words that will outlast the Pyra- 
mids of Egypt. The ^'Mouse's Nest," which his 
ploughshare ruined, has also to his poetic vision the 
tenderest moral suggestions interwoven with its fate ; 
and its fate becomes as eternal in history as the fate 
of Babylon. The sympathies of his heart go out to^ 
wards all things around him. 

" O, sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods, 
When lintwhites chant amang the buds, 
And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids, 

Their loves enjoy, 
Wliile thro' the bra,es the cushat croods 
With wailfu' cry ! 

" Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me, 
When winds rave thro' the naked tree ; 
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree 

Are hoary gray : 
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, 

Dark'ning the day ! 



38 ROBERT BURNS. 

" O Nature ! a' thy shows an' forms, 
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms ! 
Whether the summer kindly warms, 

Wi' life an' light, 
Or winter howls, in gusty storms 

The lang, dark night 1" 

Burns's mission on earth seems to have been to ele- 
vate the condition of the peasantry of Scotland. Not, 
however, like the political economist, by teaching 
some new mode of increasing the comforts of the body, 
but in elevating their spiritual natures, by throwing 
a spark of his own ethereal soul into their dull hearts, 
and kindling there the dormant energies. He spread 
a fancied beauty over all the realities of rural life. 
He showed the peasant that there was a pleasurable 
sympathy in his heart, to be awakened by every thing 
in his most laborious avocations ; and thus made the 
most irksome duties a source of happiness. Burns 
lived and moved in the scenes of rural life. His own 
hands, and his own heart, had done and felt all that 
his poetry portrays. He idealizes realities. His ru- 
ral scenes are real scenes. There is neither illusion, 
exaggeration, nor affectation about them. All are 
truthful life-sketches. He showed that there could 
be such a thing as love in a cottage, pure, holy love ; 
love elevated and akin to heaven. He showed that 
there could be happiness, and refined. Christian hap- 
piness in a cottage. He seems like a spirit sent on 
earth, with a special power to kindle the sparks of 
sentiment that smoulder in the hearts of the simple 



ASAPOET. 39 

dwellers in hovels, and to make them feel their kin- 
dred to divinity. And it was not one, or a few feel- 
ings of the heart that he awakened, but all and every 
one he electrified by the music of sentiment which 
had been infused into his own soul, by the God who 
made him the ennobling genius to raise out of its 
dull life the lowly peasantry of one of the most re- 
markable countries on earth. And when the higher 
circles of Scottish life heard the sweet strains of his 
lyre, coming up from the lowly scenes of the peasant's 
cottage, they turned their ears to catch the ravishing 
strains, and their hearts, kindling into sympathy, be- 
gan to feel that all men are indeed of one great family. 
And thus the higher and the lower walks of life were 
drawn nearer to each other, and all orders of society 
brought into affiliation. 

In showing what Burns did in the great task 
which seems to have been assigned to his genius, 
the " Cotter's Saturday Night" may be taken as the 
groundwork. And was there ever a nobler picture 
of a real scene drawn ? Did poetry and religion 
ever before shed such mingled beauty over so hum- 
ble a scene ? How many thousands of such scenes 
had before occurred in Scotland I But who had 
ever seen their real import ? Not one human being. 
But when Burns poured the light of his genius over 
the scene, — when he sent his own being into all 
things, animate and inanimate, when he personated 
the toil-worn cotter, and speaks from his own soul, 
such sentiments as a cotter should speak, and does 



40 ROBERTBTJRNS. 

what the cotter should do ; when he personates 
every member of the cotter's family, and does and 
speaks for each, what his own soul inspires ; when 
he lives in them all — the scene becomes magical, a 
high spiritual significance is given to it ; and every 
peasant throughout Scotland feels the beauty of the 
life which he had before looked upon as a dull, toil- 
some reality. An ideal of peasant life was thus set 
before a whole people, and set before them in such 
living reality, with such touches of nature, that 
every heart responded to its truthfulness, and every 
man and woman, and every youth and maiden, felt 
that in such a life, with such sentiments, and such 
deeds, they could feel a happiness of a high order. 
They felt that such a life was fit for an immortal 
being, and a fit preparation for a state of higher ex- 
istence. Let any one study well this admirable 
poem, let him look at it as a whole, and scan it in 
all its details, let him view every personage in the 
humble drama, — the old cotter himself returning 
from work, his children running to meet him, his 
wife greeting him with a smile, " their eldest hope, 
their Jenny, woman grown, in youthful bloom, love 
sparkling in her e'e," then the joy of the whole fam- 
ily, as " the social hours swift winged unnoticed 
fleet," then the rap at the door, and a youth enter- 
ing, and the " sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and the flush 
on her cheek," telling her anxious mother what his 
visit means ; then the supper, then the family wor- 
ship, and finally, the retiring of all to rest : and let 



ASAPOET. 41 

him dwell upon the admirable sentiments which 
pervade the whole, the beautiful proprieties which 
characterize every thing, the beauty of holiness 
which appears in the entire scene, and he may then 
estimate the influence which this fine work of art, 
so true to nature, has done in elevating the peasant 
life of Scotland. And the poet himself has con- 
ceived the poem in a national spirit, and connected 
it with the glory of his country. In the concluding 
stanzas he addresses himself to his country, and asks 
from Heaven a blessing on it, by preserving such 
pvirity in peasant life as he has just described. And 
finally, connecting his work with the deeds of Wal- 
lace, he feels that a patriot bard has the great duty 
to perform of promoting the glory of his country. 

Burns, then, seizing upon the gTcat element of 
social life, the family, and infusing into it the eleva- 
tion and the purity of his own genius, and connect- 
ing it with the glory of his country, shows that he 
felt the full scope of the genius that was working 
within him to a great end. He laid the foundation 
of his whole work in the " Cotter's Saturday Night." 
Every thing else he wrote, may be considered as 
auxiliary to the purpose shadowed forth in that 
poem. For his other writings, taken as a whole, 
have the same tendency as the " Cotter's Saturday 
Night," — to elevate the peasant life of Scotland. 
Let any one read his writings with this view of 
them, and he will see the truth of these remarks. 
What, for instance, do all his sweet lyrics illustrate, 



42 ROBERTBURNS. 

but something in rural life that can affect the 
heart? He does by his writings in a few years, 
what tradition does in ages — fills the scenes of his 
country with the creations of fancy. Every thing, 
animate and inanimate, is beautified and endeared 
by associations thrown around them by his genius. 
The hills, the vales, the streams, the avocations of 
the peasant, are all rendered dear by some touching 
incident. The peasant who has once read the ad- 
dress to the " Dais}^," can never see one again, with- 
out his heart awakens to sympathy with the fine 
sentiments of that poem ; or the address to the 
"Mouse," or to the ''Wounded Hare," without 
feeling the touches of nature making him conscious 
of his kindred to Robert Burns. And who can read 
that exquisite picture of love in peasant life which 
Burns has drawn of himself and Mary Campbell, in 
his " Highland Mary," and suppose that every Scot- 
tish youth has not had his heart awakened to a 
higher estimate of the holy sympathy by which the 
Creator binds together the hearts of man and wo- 
man? Such a scene had often occurred before in 
Scotland : lovers had met in some sequestered rural 
spot, and had parted to meet again, and death in 
the interval, had laid one in the grave. But never 
before had a Robert Burns so met, and so parted, 
v/ith a Mary Campbell. It remained for him to 
embody in words, the sentiments of the lover's heart, 
and to depict and exhibit to the world, a real scene 
in rustic life, more simply touching, more divinely 



ASAPOET. 43 

pathetic, than the imagination of the poet ever be- 
fore conceived. It seems as though the bees of mem- 
ory, going back over the scenes of the past, had sip- 
ped the honey-dew from each sweet little flower that 
bloomed in the vale of youth, and coming back laden 
with the freight of love, had nestled in his heart. 
His whole soul is in the subject. Not content to 
celebrate his love for Mary Campbell on earth, his 
heart lingers after her in heaven ; and, as if he had 
caught the strain from her angelic harp, he pours 
forth his feelings so winning sweet, so amiably ten- 
dfjr, as to give to the world a new idea of the deli- 
cacy of human sentiment. 

Never can a youth and a maiden walk together 
on the banks of the Ayr, without dwelling on the 
enchanting association of Robert Burns and Mary 
Campbell, who, like themselves, traversed its banks, 
and being ennobled by the contemplation. And as 
soon could the deeds of Wallace and of Bruce be 
erased from Scottish history, as this incident from 
Scottish literature. The Grampian hills could 
sooner perish, than these beautiful monuments 
which Burns has erected to the memory of the being 
whom of all God's creatures, he loved most dearly. 
Mary Campbell was the muse who inspired his 
genius. It was her dear self that fully awakened 
in his heart its holiest sympathy, and made him feel 
that there was another heart, with which it was far 
sweeter to commune than with his own. And thus 
he was inspired to embody in verse the feelings of 



44 ROBERT BURNS. 

his soul in communion with the sweet creature, 
whom God had so formed as to awaken in his heart 
a pleasure dearer far than the heart itself. That 
love, pure, sincere love, was the ruling passion of 
Burns's heart, none can deny, who have studied his 
life and writings. And never did a poet write so 
beautifully and so true to nature on the sacred theme. 
Remember the numerous lyrics in which the senti- 
ment is embodied, and consider the earnestness and 
sincerity of them all. And what can exceed in 
beauty the love scene between the eldest daughter 
and her lover in the " Cotter's Saturday Night !" 
And what noble sentiments are set forth on the en- 
rapturing subject ! 

" O happy love ! where love like this is found ! 

O heart-felt raptures ! — bliss beyond compare ! 
I've paced much this weary, mortal round, 

And sage experience bids me this declare, — 
If Heaven a draught of heav'nly pleasure spare, 

One cordial in this melancholy vale, 
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair 

In other's arms, breathe out the tender talc. 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale." 

The truth is, the chord in Burns's heart, which 
Mary Campbell touched, was so completely attuned 
to her image, that to his latest breath, the sweetest 
music of his soul was awakened by the memory 
of her. His spirit, rapt in the enthusiasm of love, 
was carried down on the long-lingering stream of 
sweet memories, through the blissful scenes of their 



AS A POET. 45 

youth. How could a noble heart like his, ever for- 
get such a creature as she must have been, who 
inspired his heart to depict such a scene as that in 
" Highland Mary," and to pour forth the exquisite 
strain of " Mary in Heaven I" His heart was so 
fashioned, as the hearts of men of high sentiment 
always are, as never to love fully but once. The 
ideal of perfect loveliness in the mind of Burns, was 
the image of Mary Campbell. It was her magic 
person and spirit that first fully awakened within 
him the sweetest of all human sentuuents, as it is 
the most holy. And never did that sentiment vibrate 
along the chords of a heart, through which it diffused 
more exquisite pleasure. Though Burns addressed 
so many beautiful lyrics, to so many different fe- 
males, when his writings are narrowly scanned, and 
the workings of his heart analyzed, it can be seen 
that they are but the rehearsal of strains which the 
sweet charms of Mary Campbell had first drawn forth 
from the lyre of his heart. Can it be imagined, for 
instance, that so beautiful, so exquisitely wrought, 
so artistically finished a little poem, as the address 
to Miss Craikshank, would have been written on so 
slight an occasion, if the simple,' sweet little allegory 
had not been already wi'itten on the heart ? Mary 
Campbell was in every pulse along his veins, in 
every roving fancy. " In poets and in painters, and 
perhaps in men who are neither the one nor the 
other, it is tolerably certain (says a writer) that the 
object of their first sincere attachment furnishes not 



46 ROBERT BURNS. 

a few of the elements which go to make up tha 
character which continues through life, for them, 
the most attractive. Their ideal woman, however 
exalted and refined by their own further develop- 
ment, will continue to bear a sisterly resemblance to 
their first love. Who can fail to recognize, even in 
the most spiritual of Eaphael's later creations, the 
fair-haired Madonnas of his earliest time. We may 
conceive the Madonna di San Sisto, as representing 
the glorified body of the ' Bella Giordiniere.' A 
more minute acquaintance with the early days of 
the prince of painters, would probably reveal to us 
the simple story of some yellow-haired daughter of 
Urbino, whom he had wooed on the breezy heights 
of the Apennines, while yet he listened to the in- 
structions, and sat at the feet of old Pietro Perugino, 
and whose recompense for many an hour of youthful 
bliss has been, that her image has been consecrat- 
ed by the hands of her lover, and forever entwined 
with the highest conceptions which men in after 
times were to form of sacred beauty. In the other 
great painters, it seems to us that we can trace 
something analogous, — the delicately sensual air 
v/hich characterizes the whole of Corregio's women, 
— the sunny glow of wanton life and joy which 
warms those of Titian, — and the mild and saintlike 
spirit which is shed over Murillo's virgins, seem to 
mark them out as three distinct families of beauti- 
ful sisters, in each of whom we can trace the re- 
semblance to some common parent. They have 



ASAPOET. 47 

each, in short, what is called a type^ the origin of 
which may be that which we have suggested." 
Dante, the great Italian poet, was swayed equally 
with Burns, by this master passion. He never 
loved but one only being. When in his ninth year 
he saw on a festive May-day, under a laurel tree, 
Beatrice, a Florentine maid in middle rank of life, 
of extraordinary beauty and attraction, his poetic 
heart heaved within him, and revealed a delicious 
sentiment, of which he knew not before he possessed 
the hidden treasure. The fountains of his heart 
were opened. Streams of bliss flowed through his 
delighted feelings. Beatrice became the muse of 
his inspiration. She died, and he married another. 
But his heart ever lingered after the lovely vision of 
ideal beauty, which he beheld in Beatrice. He was 
fired with the pride, with the glory, to have his 
name associated with hers in the eyes of men, and 
accordingly, he immortalized her in his " Divina 
Comedia." And so mysterious are the workings of 
the human heart, that it may be, that had not Bea- 
trice captivated the soul of Dante, he would never 
have written his immortal poem. For such is the 
power of love over some minds, that all their ambi- 
tion seems to be absorbed in it, and they would build 
a pyramid for no other purpose than to inscribe their 
names with that of the loved one, to perpetuate the 
fact to future ages. Common minds cannot con- 
ceive the intense cravings of such a heart as Burns's 
and Dante's after a being in whom they beheld their 



48 ROBERTBURNS. 

ideal of female loveliness. The young man of poetie 
genius, longs after the society of some perfectly 
faultless woman, — the ideal of moral purity and 
physical beauty, upon whom to lavish the fulness 
of his love, and be made happy in SAveet sympathy 
with such a being. But as no such ideal can be 
found in human nature, he selects from the fair 
daughters of earth, the one in whose charms he finds 
the greatest bliss, and the nearest approaches to that 
beatitude which hope craves and fancy pictures, and 
invests her with all the loveliness of the ideal one. 
And she stands forth forever after, the ideal model, 
for the loveliest creations of his fancy. 

When we reflect, that love is the central tie of 
society, and the foundation of all morals, it is at 
once seen how important it is, that it should be ex- 
hibited in all its purity, by those who form the sen- 
timents and the tastes of a people. And never did 
a poet write so purely and so truthfully on this 
subject, as Burns. Every thought is a touch of na- 
ture, every expression the articulate beatings of his 
own heart. Let any one study the poetry of Burns 
until he has completely realized the spirit of love 
which breathes in it, and then let him turn to the 
songs of Moore, and he will at once see in these, 
not sentiment, but sentimentality ; not love as it 
warms and melts in a pure heart, but the gay gal- 
lantry of a heart that tries to feel, but cannot. Tbe 
love of " Moore's Melodies" is the love of ancient 
times, the love of Anacreon ; — a superficial, gay, 



AS A POET. 49 

pleasant, voluptuous feeling. The spirit of " Lalla 
Rookh," the love of the harem, vibrates along the 
chords of his lyre. And such was the sentiment of 
love as exhibited in ancient literature. It was 
Christianity which fost infused that pathos into the 
human heart, which gives to modern love its exqui- 
site sweetness. The same divine teachings which 
purify the other sentiments of the heart, shed their 
selectest influences on the tenderest of them all. 
How utterly gross and uninteresting are all the de- 
scriptions of nuptial rites and love scenes, as por- 
trayed in ancient literature, in comparison with that 
glorious description by Milton, in the eighth book of 
'' Paradise Lost," of Adam leading Eve to the nup- 
tial bower, blushing like the morn. There is in it 
such a happy blending of the physical and the spirit- 
ual, — enough of the physical to make the blood run 
warm, and enough of the spiritual, to give to the 
feeling all the exquisiteness of high sentiment. 
There is such freedom of thought, and yet such 
chastity. Every thing is fully revealed to the 
thought, and yet so happily concealed from the eye. 
Milton realized the truth first fully developed by the 
influence of Christianity, that love is a spiritual sen- 
timent grafted on a physical instinct. The physical 
instinct, all feel. But the spiritual sentiment is 
felt, in all its exquisite sweetness, only by the most 
delicately fashioned minds. How blissful a realiza- 
tion of the sentiment Milton experienced, is seen in 
the joy, which in this description, is diffused over all 

3 



50 ROBERTBURNS. 

nature, at the nuptial scene of our first parents. 
Never did poet select objects from nature, with such 
magical effect, to heighten our ideas of the bliss of 
an event, as he has, in this description. The very 
evening star is bid to haste upon his hill-top, to light 
the bridal lamp. 

Although I have dwelt so long on this topic, I have 
not done with it. So much prominence has been 
given to it, not merely to illustrate the character of 
Burns, and to point out the source of his inspiration, 
but also for the purpose of showing, as I shall pres- 
ently do, the influence which it has exerted through 
the writings of Burns on British literature and Brit- 
ish morals. In order to do this, and at the same 
time to show the character of Burns as a poet, it will 
be necessary to take a retrospect of British litera- 
ture ; examine the spirit and form of its first devel- 
opment, see liow it degenerated, and in what man- 
ner it is returning to its primitive type. 

The first form of literature that appears in every 
nation, is ballad poetry ; and this consists of raptur- 
ous descriptions of the most striking objects of nature, 
and of the exploits and actions of men, that are at 
such a period of a people's progress, deemed most 
important. Such poetry is remarkable for its wild 
freedom, its naturalness, the boldness of its represen- 
tations, the freshness and vividness of its coloring, 
and the facility with which the whole work seems to 
have been done. This poetry is always stamped with 
the peculiarities of the people among whom it origi- 



AS A POET. 51 

nates. Every thing that marks them as a peculiar 
people : their opinions, their sentiments, their pur- 
suits, are all bodied forth in living forms, in this the 
first development of their souls into literature. And 
in proportion as the peculiar spirit and form of this 
primitive literature is preserved in their subsequent 
literary productions, will be their power, their life, 
and their originality. This truth is strikingly illus- 
trated in the literature of ancient Greece. The spirit 
and the forms of her ballad poetry, were embodied in 
the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, with all the power 
which further development could bestow. And thus 
all the fire and power of the primitive genius of Greece 
inspired Grecian literature through its whole course ; 
for Homer continued to be the polar star of Greek 
literature, until the Greek mind, by foreign corrup- 
tion, was incapable of appreciating masculine beau- 
ties. And where can there be found a nobler litera- 
ture ? It embodied every excellence which it was 
possible to develop in the then state of the world. 
How striking is the contrast between it and the lit- 
erature of Rome. The ballad poetry of the Romans 
was entirely extinguished by the flood of Greek lit- 
erature : the Greek literature having come in upon 
the Romans, before their own literature had been suf- 
ficiently developed to drink into itself Greek culture, 
and assimilate it to its own distinctive type. The 
Romans, therefore, finding it easier to borrow than 
to invent, became the imitators of Greek models, and 



52 ROBERT BURNS. 

produced nothing original, nothing purely Roman, in 
all their literature. 

In the formation of modern literature, also, the 
primitive form of letters has been of more or less in- 
fluence, according to circumstances. Hordes of bar- 
barians with strong features of character, and pos- 
sessed of ballad poetry and legends, corresponding 
with their character, came down in hostile inroad 
upon the countries cultivated by Greek and Roman 
literature, and crushed them beneath their rude feet. 
But they found themselves in the midst of a people 
more cultivated than themselves, and their own dis- 
tinctive influence was less where the ancient culture 
was strongest, and greater where it was weakest. 
Accordingly, the Italian, of all modern literature, 
most resembles the ancient, and has less of the mod- 
ern type. Indeed, it is chiefly to the new element 
which Christianity has given to modern literature, 
that any thing distinctive in Italian literature is to 
be ascribed. In all else it is Roman. The element 
of the northern type of thought still however, lives in 
its matter as well as in its language. 

But as we advance to the north, from whence the 
distinctive element of modern literature came forth, 
we find that element more and more distinctly 
prominent. And of all the cultivated nations of 
modern Europe, the German and English have the 
most original language and literature, having been in 
their earlier periods less under the influence of Ro- 
man and Greek culture. Both these nations have 



ASAPOET. 53 

preserved the spirit of their primitive literature, and 
developed all their letters according to their own dis- 
tinctive types. And their literatures are thus em- 
phatically national, the one German, the other Eng- 
lish, and both modern. 

But it is v^ith English literature, that we are 
concerned. Our remarks upon all other literatures 
are designed merely to give distinctness to what we 
have to say about this. The primitive spirit and 
form of this literature has been preserved. It is an 
original, a peculiar literature. It lives by its own 
life, it blossoms with its own bloom, and it bears its 
own fruit. It is emphatically English ! The spirit, 
and sentiments, and forms of the ballad poetry and 
legends which came forth from the spontaneous im- 
pulses of the English mind, before its type had been 
modified, or its robustness cramped by foreign cul- 
ture, were embodied by Spenser and developed into 
an enduring monument. And Shakspeare breathed 
the same air, and drank at the same fountains, and 
listened to the same music, and saw the same visions, 
and lived and acted under the same national impulses, 
through his whole literary labors. And Shakspeare 
is the English Homer, the polar star of English liter- 
ature, leading the English mind in the right paths. 
And Milton, though cultivated by all ancient and all 
modern literature, has moulded all to the type of his 
own national genius. The primitive forms of English 
literature live in his glorious works. English opin- 
ions, English sentiments, and English manners, are 



54 R O B E R T B U R N S . 

all in the entire literature of England during the time 
of which I am now speaking, down to the Restoration 
of Charles the Second. The prose writers, as well as 
the poets, were all giants of one nation and one family. 
Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon, Hooker, Raleigh, Taylor, 
Barrow, Napier, Milton, Cudworth, Hobbs, Locke, 
and others, were the men who built up the pyramids 
of English literature. Their works stand forth, vast, 
grand, and peculiar. Notwithstanding the great di- 
versity of the subjects and the designs of these wri- 
ters, they all have the same characteristics of great 
boldness, originality, force, and English peculiarity. 
The civil wars which broke out in England, checked 
these noble developments of native genius ; and the 
energies of the people were directed into different 
fields of exertion. For however much was done by 
the Puritans for religious freedom and civil liberty, 
during these troubled times, literature certainly de- 
clined under the withering influence of religious and 
moral asceticism. But still the literature of the times 
was English in all its elements. But when the Res- 
toration brought into the country a king and a court, 
who had, during their exile in France, imbibed the 
taste of that country, the barriers of English literary 
independence were entirely broken down. England 
then became a province of the great republic of Eu- 
ropean letters. And a French taste, called a classi- 
cal taste, formed after ancient models, began to mould 
and fashion English letters. French dress, French 
manners, and French morals, all alike became the 



AS A POET. 55 

fashion, and spread from the court over the kingdom. 
The world ceased to be considered by Englishmen as 
a scene of sacred duties, important enterprises, and 
lofty views, as it had been through all their previous 
history. It was now considered a mere theatre of 
amusement. The deeper and solemn passions of the 
heart no longer swelled in English bosoms, awakened 
by lofty views of human destiny. A gay and heart- 
less complacency took the place of the grave dignity 
of former times, and showed that effeminacy had su- 
perseded the manliness and robust energy of English 
character. The most sacred ties of social life were 
looked upon as trifles ; and intrigue and amours were 
considered as indispensable accomplishments of a fine 
gentleman. Ridicule and fun became the predomi- 
nant sentiments, and the world was looked upon 
pretty much as Butler has presented it in Hudibras. 
Indeed, that poem might well be considered the grand 
epic of that age. All the literature was excessively 
immoral ; for the world had become a comedy. 
Wycherly, Congreve, and the other comic dramatists, 
took an especial care to deride, by the most ridicu- 
lous exposures, that peculiar feature in English mo- 
rality, faithfulness to the marriage tie. 

But such extreme grossness soon began to decline. 
The deed, however, had been done. English man- 
ners had lost their sincerity, and English character 
its manliness. Every thing was now more polished 
and more heartless. The age of debauchery was 
passing away, and that of gallantry independent of 



56 R O B E R T B U R N S . 

personal attachment was coming on. And litera- 
tm-e, which is always the expression of the charac- 
ter of the age, lost its ease, its majesty, its copi- 
ousness, and its originality. The harp of English 
poetry, with its deep pathos, and its exquisite sweet- 
ness, was no longer touched by the robust hand of 
national genius, but hung silent upon the Druidical 
oak. Every thing had become foppish and exquisite. 
The sublime tone of the old poets, their rich and 
unrestrained fancy, and their luxuriant negligence, 
were considered barbarous by this new school ; and 
their tenderness and romantic sweetness in portray- 
ing the domestic feelings, were derided as child- 
ishness. In a word, most of what constituted the 
glory of the old literature was deemed unrefined, 
and inconsistent with the supposed necessary heart- 
lessness of polished man. Satire, sophistry, arti- 
ficial declamation, wit, and elaborate workmanship, 
became the characteristics of the literature of the 
age. Dryden, Pope, Addison, and Swift, are the 
great names in this literature, with all its faults and 
all its excellencies. How few lines that are truly 
sublime, pathetic or tender, can be found through- 
out the wide extent of the cold domain which was 
cultivated with so much art. Bolingbroke, though 
steeped in all the immorality of the times, by the 
power of his genius, bore himself superior to the 
general literary style of the day. And his writings, 
though rotten at the heart, are grand and majestic 
in their broad and lofty trunk, and their luxuriant 



AS A POET. 



57 



and wide-reaching branches. Soon after the age of 
Queen Anne, this literature began to lose its high 
reputation. Omens of a change in taste began to 
appear. Thomson, both in his style and in his topics, 
showed that the dawn of a better taste was opening. 
He was more natural and more homely. And Cow- 
per approached nearer still to the old standards, by 
treating of subjects that touched the heart, in natu- 
ral phrases and in natural images. Poetry began to 
assume its proper vocation, of writing for the many 
and not for the few. It began again to weave its 
beauties around the universal realities of nature and 
of life. 

In this state of British literature Burns appeared. 
Educated in no school, trammelled by no master, 
exulting in the magic of unrestrained genius, he 
caught his inspiration from nature herself, and spoke 
as she bid him. 

" I am nae poet, in a sense, 
But just a rhymer, like by chance, 
An' hae to learning nae pretence, 

Yet, what the matter ? 
When'er my muse does on me glance, 

I jingle at her. 

Your critic-folk may cock their nose, 
And say, ' How can you e'er propose. 
You, wha ken hardly verse frae prose, 

To mak a sang ?' 
But, by your leaves, my learned foes, 

Ye're may-be wrang. 
3* 



58 ROBERT BURNS. 

What 's a' your jargon o' your schools, 
Your Latin names for horns an' stools ; 
If honest nature made you fools, 

What sairs your grammars ? 
Ye'd better ta'en up spades and shools 

Or knappin-hammers. 

A set o' dull, conceited hashes, 
Confuse their brains in college classes ! 
They gang in stirks, and come out asses, 

Plain truth to speak ; 
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus, 

By dint o' Greek ! 

Gie me a spark o' Nature's fire ! 

That's a' the learning I desire ; 

Then, though I drudge thro' dub an' mire, 

At plough or cart, 
My muse, though hamely in attire. 

May touch the he :t." 

Burns felt, that to touch the heart, was the great 
work of the poet ; and that to do this, he must em- 
body, in their greatest purity and their greatest 
strength, the feelings and the sentiments of the age, 
as they are connected with the manners and customs, 
and the natural scenes and the historic incidents of 
his country. This, no poet had done for Scotland. 

" Nae poet thought her worth his while, 
To set her name in measur'd style *, 
She lay like some unkenn'd-of isle, 

Beside New-Holland, 
Or whare, wild-meeting oceans boil 
Besouth Magellan." 



AS A POET. 59 

Burns resolved to rescue his country from this poetic 
oblivion : and never did a poet perform his- task with 
more originality. For in the whole history of litera- 
ture, no man ever appeared in the province of letters 
so little under the influence of the literary taste of 
his age. He was not more isolated from the fashion- 
able circles of social life, by his humble birth, than 
he was from the literary taste of the age, by his pe- 
culiar mental culture, and his natural literary in- 
stincts. The literary taste of the age was severely 
cold. The poetry most in vogue, treated of topics as 
remote from all feeling and sentiment, and as little 
connected with nature and the present times, as if 
man had no heart, and the present was of no interest. 
Burns is all heart, all nature, and treats of no topic 
whatever but those that are inwoven with the 
feelings and the sentiments, and connected with his 
country. Driven by the force of his genius over the 
social limits of his birth, towering on proud wing 
above the walls of criticism, he looked beyond, over 
the vast fields of various nature, and breathed into 
his soul a universal inspiration. Sweepmg in his 
wide flights, and rejoicing in his strength, he took 
from the hand of nature her harp, and tuned the 
strings for himself. Full of love for nature, filled 
with the glory of his country, in love with all that is 
good and great in his country's history, in love too 
with the hills, the vales, the streams, with every 
thing that appertains to Scotland, he was destined, 
by his genius, to be the national poet of his country. 



60 ROBERT BURNS. 

And this destiny he seems to have felt in early- 
youth. 

" Ev'n then, a wish (I mind its pow'r), 
A wish, that to my latest hour, 

Shall strongly heave my breast, — 
That I for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some usefu' plan or beuk could make. 

Or sing a sang at least." 

Burns consecrated the peasant's cottage as the temple 
of his fame. It was the hearts under this humble 
roof, whose feelings and sentiments he was to delin- 
eate. It was to throw the enchantment of ideal 
beauty over cottage scenes, and cottage joys and sor- 
rows, that his muse was to sing. Palaces and courts 
were to give place to the cottage, — the heart-felt 
pleasures of the last were to be contrasted with the 
cold courtesies of the first. And hear him strike his 

« * * * moorland harp, 

Wi' gleesome touch !" 

" The lav'rock shuns the palace gay, 
And o'er the cottage sings ; 
For nature smiles as sweet, I ween, 
To shepherds as to kings. 

Let minstrels sweep the skilfu' string. 

In lordly lighted ha' ; 
The shepherd stops his simple reed, 

BUthe, in the birken shaw. 

The princely revel may survey 
Our rustic dance wi' scorn ; 



AS A POET. 61 

But are their hearts as light as ours, 
Beneath the milk-white thorn ? 

The shepherd, in the flow'ry glen, 

In shepherd's phrase will woo ; 
The courtier tells a finer tale, 

But is his heart as true ? 

These wild-wood flovvers I've pu'd to deck 

That spotless breast o' thine ; 
The courtier's gems may witness love. 

But 'tis na love hke mine." 

It was by simple strains like this, that Burns 
brought back into poetry natural topics, healthful 
sentiments, and a manly morality. There could not 
be a greater contrast than there is between his poetry 
and that of the age preceding him. His is all nature, 
that is all art. What he says of Allan Ramsay, is 
a perfect description of his own muse : — 

" Thou paints auld nature to the nines, 
In thy sweet Caledonian lines ; 
Nae gowden stream thro' myrtles twines, 

Where Philomel, 
While nightly breezes sweep the vines. 

Her griefs will tell ! 

In gowany glens thy burnie strays, 
Where bonnie lasses bleach their claes ; 
Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes, 

Wi' hawthorns gray. 
Where blackbirds join the shepherd's lays 

At close o' day. 

Thy rural loves are nature's sel' ; 
Nae bombast spates o' nonsense swell ; 



62 ROBERT BURNS. 

Nae snap conceits, but that sweet spell 

O' witchin' love ; 
That charm that can the strongest quell, 

The sternest move." 

We have seen, that during the reign of Charles 
the Second, the sentiment of love had been degraded 
into a heartless gallantry ; and that in the literature 
which sprung up during the reign of Queen Anne, a 
general heartlessness prevailed, betokening a state of 
society unfavorable to noble sentiment, and in marked 
contrast with that which characterized the old poets. 
Those poets were no less distinguished for the pure 
language of the affections, than for glowing descrip- 
tions of nature, and profound thought and lofty sen- 
timents. With what divine diction, with what be- 
witching illustrations, with what romantic sweetness 
of incident, is innocent love set forth in " Paradise 
Lost !" The very dews of love seem sprinkled over 
the descriptions! The spirit of an English fire- 
side hovers over the domestic scenes of paradisiacal 
happiness. This is one of the chief glories of the 
poem ; and, indeed, the domestic element is one of 
the chief glories of modern literature. This element 
was scarcely known to ancient literature. The se- 
clusion in which woman was kept, took away from 
private life its elegant courtesies, and rendered the 
gayeties of social intercourse pretty much of a coarse 
debauch. It was Christianity, which in its general 
awakening of the deeper sympathies of our nature, 
first fully opened this finest source of emotion. 



ASAPOET. 63 

Clothing woman in the beauty of holiness, it made 
her that impersonation of loveliness which she appears 
in modern literature. And in no poet does she ap- 
pear so lovely as in Burns. No poet understood so 
well how to set forth '' that sweet spell o' witch in' 
love." He therefore has brought back into British 
literature that high estimate of woman, and of the 
joys of domestic life, which is as indispensable to a 
sound literature, as it is to good morals. His harp 
was heard throughout every rank of British society, 
renewing, by its natural strains, the tender feelings 
of the heart, that had grown callous under the cold 
discipline of polished man, ever prone to sacrifice the 
sentiment of love in marriages of expediency. And 
with this sentinrient of love, the great master-passion 
of the heart, he brought back into poetry all those 
topics of common, universal, and eternal sympathy, 
wiiich had been banished by the later school of En- 
glish poetry. And a naturalness was again given to 
literature. So homely a topic as an old farmer's 
new-year salutation to his old mare is celebrated in 
song. The farmer recounts their past lives, and 
enumerates the happy incidents, as though they 
were companions. 

" That day, ye pranc'd in muckle pride, 
When ye bare hame my bonnie bride ; 
An' sweet and gracefu' she did ride, 
Wi' maiden air. 

When thou an' I were young an' skeigh, 
An' stable-meals at fairs wore dreigh. 



64 ROBERT BURNS. 

How thou wad prance, an' snore, an' skreigh, 
An' tak the road ! 

Town's bodies ran, an' stood abeigh, 

An' ca't thee mad." 

What could be more graphic ? We see the picture 
with our material eyes. What is it that genius can- 
not adorn ? And Burns celebrates so trivial a thing 
as a mouse's nest torn up by the share of his plough. 

" Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin ; 
An' naething, now, to big a new ane, 

O' foggage green ; 
An' bleak December's winds ensuin', 

Baith snell and keen ! 

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble. 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! 
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, 

But house or hald. 
To thole the winter's sleety dribble. 

An' cranreuch cauld! 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane. 
In proving foresight may be vain : 
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

Gang aft a-gley, 
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain 

For promis'd joy. 

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me ! 
The present only toucheth thee ; 
But och ! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear ! 
An' forward, tho' I canna see, 

I guess an' fear!" 



ASAPOET. 65 

With what exquisite effect is this, so common an in- 
cident, wrought into a most tender and instructive 
lesson ! There is a tenderness, mingled with a species 
of humor, that belongs only to the muse of Burns, 
interwoven with such delicate tact into the descrip- 
tion ! The same mingled tenderness and humor is 
admirably exhibited in the lament for the death of 
the pet sheep Mailie. 

" Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him ; 
A lang half-mile she could descry him, 
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him. 

She ran wi' speed : 
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him, 
Than Mailie dead. 

I wat she was a sheep o' sense. 
An' could behave hersel wi' mense ; 
I'll say't, she never brak a fence, 

Thro' thievish greed. 
Our bardie lanely keeps the spence. 

Sin' Mailie 's dead. 

Or, if he wanders up the howe, 

Her living image in her yovve, 

Comes bleating to him, owre the knowe. 

For bits o' bread ; 
An' down the briny pearls rowe. 

For Mailie dead." 

Nothing can show more clearly than these instances, 
the poetic power of the commonest objects and in- 
cidents. What can be more touching, and at the 
same time highly poetic, than the living image of 
the sheep coming bleating to him for bits of bread ! 



66 ROBERTBURNS. 

Poetic ambition overleaps itself when it attempts to 
vault beyond nature. There was, I believe, no feel- 
ing of lightness akin to humor in the heart of Burns 
while he depicted these scenes. It is their extreme 
childlike simplicity, that makes them awaken that 
state of feeling in our less simply-tender bosoms. 
We have not the simplicity of heart to feel as Burns 
did when musina: on such incidents. He became as 
a little child for the moment, " She was a sheep o' 
sense," though, to us, is ludicrous, would be seriously 
said by a child. And just so, I believe, it was for 
the moment of poetic feeling, to Burns. Critics 
have been puzzled to analyze this peculiar mingling 
of the tender and the humorous in Burns. Such I 
believe to be the true solution of the matter. Doubt- 
less, after these pieces were written, and the first 
impressions of the incidents wore away. Burns in 
reading them was impressed as we are, with a min- 
gled tenderness and humor. The following song 
seems to me to illustrate, by its peculiar character- 
istics, the point under consideration. It is equally 
as tender, and quite as simple, as the poems which 
we have been considering, but it does not approach 
so near to the humorous. And we are enabled by 
it to see, how gradually the simple may shade off into 
the humorous. 

" Oh, stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay, 
Nor quit for me the trembling spray ; 
A hapless lover courts thy lay — 
Thy soothing, fond complaining. 



ASAPOET. 67 

Again, again, that tender part, 
That I may catch thy melting art ; 
For suroly that wud touch her heart, 
Wha kills me wi' disdaining. 

Say, was thy little mate unkind, 
And heard thee as the careless wind ? 
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd, 
Sic notes of love could wauken. 

Thou tells o' never ending care, 
O' speechless grief, and dark despair; 
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair, 
Or my poor heart is broken." 

Now it is quite manifest in this beautiful little song, 
that it is nothing but the simple in it, which ap- 
proximates to the humorous. And I can well con- 
ceive that to some, it will appear to be really humor- 
ous. But it can never be so to one who can fully 
appreciate the simple and the tender. And the only 
reason why the address to the Mouse, and the lament 
for the pet Sheep, appear to approach nearer to the 
humorous than this song does, is that the simple ob- 
jects in them are not of the kind which are as nearly 
allied to the tender as those in this song. Let any 
one carefully compare them with a view to this point, 
and he will soon perceive the truth of these observa- 
tions. And the following stanzas are equally as 
tender, and quite as simple, as any we have been 
considering, and yet I cannot conceive that they can 
appear, to any one, in the least degree humorous. 
And this shows that it is the element of the simple, 



do ROBERTRURNS. 

in all this poetry, that produces the impression of the 
humorous, whenever such an impression is produced, 
and that this impression will be in proportion as the 
reader is incapable of appreciating the tender in con- 
junction with the simple. In a stormy winter night 
the poet says : — 

" List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle, 
I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

O' winter war, 
An' thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, 
Beneath a scar. 

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, 
That in the merry months o' spring 
Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee ? 
Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 

An' close thy e'e ?" 

It was this capacity to appreciate the simple, one 
of the highest gifts of the artist, that enabled Burns 
to throw around rural objects and rural manners and 
customs, so much poetic beauty. And the delicate 
tenderness of his heart, no less than the richness of 
his genius, enabled him to associate and to blend, 
all the tenderest sentiments of the heart with ani- 
mate and inanimate things. It was these attributes 
which qualified him to work out, with such witch- 
ery, his matchless songs, woven of the most exquisite 
material imagery and tenderest sentiment, into har- 
monious numbers. 



AS A POET. 69 

" The little flow'ret's peaceful lot, 

In yonder cliff that grows, 
Which, save the linnet's flight, I wot, 

Nae ruder visit knows. 
Was mine ; till love has o'er me past, 

And blighted a' my bloom. 
And now beneath the withering blast, 

My youth and joy consume. 

The waken'd lavrock warbling springs. 

And climbs the early sky. 
Winnowing blithe her dewy wings, 

In morning's rosy eye ; 
As little reck't I sorrow's power, 

UntO the flow'ry snare 
O' witching love, in luckless hour. 

Made me the thrall o' care." 

Nothing could be more beautiful than the descrip- 
tions in the first four lines of each of these stanzas. 
They furnish fine examples of the power of material 
imagery in the poetic act. I know of nothing in all 
poetry more beautiful in the thought and more del- 
icately soft in the diction, than the two lines, 

" Winnowing blithe her dewy wings 
In morning's rosy eye." 

But all through the songs of Burns, such exquisite 
passages can be found. 

" White o'er the linns the burnie pours, 
And rising, weets wi' misty showers 

The birks of Aberfeldy." 

A very remarkable thing about the poetry of 



70 ROBERT BURNS. 

Burns is, that throughout all its various phases it 
is intimately connected with the sober realities of 
practical life. He brings down the muses them- 
selves to have consideration for the affairs of men. 

" Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies, 
Wha by Castalia's wimpling streamies, 
Loup, sing, and lave your pretty limbiea, 

Ye ken, ye ken, 
That Strang necessity supreme is, 

Mang sons o' men. 

To make a happy fire-side clime 

To weans and wife, 
That's the true pathos and sublime 

Of human life." 

These beautiful fancies embody, in a very peculiar 
manner, the moral spirit of Burns's poetry. Being 
the sincerest of men, his real heart is poured forth in 
all his moods. If ever a man told the truth as it ap- 
peared to him, Burns has told it in the last four lines 
of these stanzas. The true pathos and sublime with 
him were always connected with reality. And he 
has made the muses, Scottish dames, laving their 
pretty limbs in wimpling streams. For in truth the 
Scottish dames were his muses. And as creative as 
was his imagination, he never once desired to see any 
being more lovely than he had beheld in woman. 
For though he had swept over the whole region of 
fancy, and beheld the loveliest visions that ever lay 
in the enchanting vales of poetry, he has said of 
woman, — 



ASAPOET. 71 

" Not the poet, in the moment 
Fancy hghtens in his e'e, 
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture 
That thy presence gie's to me." 

This is the most divine incense ever offered at the 
shrine of woman. There is nothing earthly about it. 
It is the highest conception of pure spu'itual bliss. 

But there are other subjects in rural life, besides 
those which we have been contemplating, that con- 
stitute material for poetry. The traditions and su- 
perstitions of the country people, always furnish the 
poet a fine scope for the creations of genius. In 
Scotland there was an ancient festival called " Hal- 
loween," that was connected by the imagination of 
the people, with all those charms and spells by which 
a rude people pry into futurity. This festival is held 
on a night, when fairies, and other aerial beings, 
are supposed to be abroad in the world on their mys- 
terious errands. Burns has celebrated this festival 
with the full power of his genius. His poem opens 
with a description of the fairies prancing on horses 
over hills and vales, and along streams by moonlight. 

" Upon that night, when fairies light 
On Cassilis Downans dance, 
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze, 

On sprightly coursers prance ; 
Or for Colean the route is ta'en, 

Beneath the moon's pale beams ; 

There, up the cove, to stray an' rove 

Amang the rocks and streams, 

To sport that night. 



72 ROBERT BURNS. 

Amang the bonnie, winding banks, 

Where Doon rins, wimplin', clear, 
Where Bruce ance rul'd the martial ranks, 

An' shcx)k his Carrick spear, 
Some merry, friendly countra folks, 

Together did convene. 
To burn their nits, an' pon their stocks, 

An' haud their Halloween, 

Fu' blithe that night. 

The poet then describes, with wonderful skill, a 
number of superstitious ceremonies, by which the 
merry company try their fortunes. And he presents 
as merry a scene, heightened in interest by the mys- 
tery of the proceeding, as social life can ever exhibit. 
In the midst of the fascinating narrative, with that 
felicity of genius which so distinguishes Burns, he 
presents the most beautiful description of a rivulet 
running through its winding and various course, 
which one of the charms renders necessary for him 
to mention, that descriptive poetry can furnish. In- 
deed there is such a reality in the description, that 
we can not only see the rivulet, but all its motions, 
throughout its various course, are distinctly before the 
eye. 

" Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, 
As thro' the glen it wimpl't ; 
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays ; 

Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't ; 
Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle ; 
Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 
Below the spreading hazel. 

Unseen that night. 



AS A POET. 73 

How fruitful must be the genius that can, as it 
were, by mere playfulness, spread out so bewitching 
a description ! For it is cast into as merry a coun- 
try frolic, as the honest lads and bonnie lasses of 
Scotland ever witnessed. And the poor girl, wdio 
had gone out in the moonlight " to dip her left sash- 
sleeve" into this lovely stream, is so frightened by 
something that gets between her and the moon, that 
she plunges into the water. Burns has thus immor- 
talized in song this ancient country festival, binding 
the hearts of Scotchmen to their country by a na- 
tional literature. A literature, to be healthful and 
endurmg, and to reach the highest glory of art, must 
be the sesthetic expression of a people's spirit and 
manners. According to my notions of art, it is as 
proper for poetry to realize in its creations the truth 
of the times, as it is for history to do so. It is a 
higher order of poetry, which, springing out of our 
national sympathies, embodies the incidents in which 
we are born. It then springs out of nature, and 
has all her truth and beauty. Burns was doing a 
better work when he wrote "Halloween," than 
Dryden was, when he wrote ''Alexander's Feast." 
The one is national, the other not. The poet w^ho 
wishes to reach the highest glory of his divine art, 
and to live forever, must be national. There are 
themes which are universal, such as Dante and Milton 
sung, but the poet who treats them, must give them 
the type they bear in his nation, and age. Byron, 
self-exiled, and maddened with a traitorous egotism, 



74 R O B E R T B U R N 8 . 

prostituted his great genius in treason to his national 
literature, by repudiating British themes, and sing- 
ing of ItaUan and Turkish subjects ahen to the great 
heart of the noble Britton. And oh, when I have 
followed the erring poet from scene of falsehood to 
scene of frenzy, w^hen I have seen the noble swan 
which God had sent into the world to swim in maj- 
esty on the pellucid lakes of truth, diving into the 
filthy waters of error, my heart has sunk sick within 
me, at the prostitution of so much genius. But 
Burns, bound to Scotland by every power of his 
great soul, in his poetry knew nothing but Scotland. 

" Scotland ! — deai* to him was Scotland, 
In her sons and in her daughters, 
In her Highlands, — Lowlands, — Islands, — 
Regal woods, and rushing waters ; — 
In the glory of her story, 
When her tartans fired the field ! 
Scotland ! oft betray'd — beleaguer'd — 
Scotland ! never known to yield ! 
Dear to him her Doric language, 
Thrill'd his heart-strings at her name — 
And he left her more than rubies 
In the riches of his fame." 

And it was this very nationality of feeling which 
has made Burns immortal. 

Burns shows his nationality, even in his represen- 
tation of the Devil. He makes a Scottish devil of 
him. He is not the Satan of Milton. He is not the 
Mephistophiles of Goethe. He is altogether unique. 



AS A POET. 75 

It is true you recognize in him the roaring lion of the 
Scriptures. 

"Whyles, ranging like a roaring lion, 
For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin' ; 
Whyles on the strong- vving'd tempest flyin', 

Tirlin the kirks : 
Whyles, in the human bosom pryin'. 

Unseen thou lurks." 

There is a humorousness about this description, 
which, with all its terrific import, makes the person- 
age described, another than the Satan of the Scrip- 
tures. It is the superstitions, with which the devil 
is associated by a great mystery in the creed of the 
vulgar, that have made Burns give a humorous vein 
to the delineation of his character. 

" I've heard my reverend grannie say, 
In lanely glens ye hke to stray ; 
Or where auld ruin'd castles, gray 

Nod to the moon, 
Ye fright the nightly wanderer's way, 

Wi' eldritch croon. 

When twilight did my grannie summon. 
To say her prayers, douce, honest woman ! 
Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin', 

Wi' eerie drone. 
Or, rustlin, thro' the boortries comin', 

Wi' heavy groan. 

Ae dreary, windy, winter night. 

The stars shot down wi' sklcntin' light, 



76 ROBERT BURNS. 

Wi' you, mysel, I gat a fright 

Ayont the lough ; 
Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight, 

Wi' waving sough." 

And as he did not catch Burns that night, Burns 
persuades himself that he will be always able to give 
him the go-by. 

" An' now, auld cloots, I ken ye're thinkin', 
A certain bardie's rantin', drinkin, 
Some luckless hour will send him linkin', 

To your black pit ; 
But, faith ! he'll turn a corner jinkin', 

An' cheat you yet." 

Gilbert Burns says of this poem by his brother, 
^'The curious idea of such an address was suggested 
to him, by running over in his mind, the many ludi- 
crous accounts and representations we have from vari- 
ous quarters of this august personage." Burns never 
sought for a poetic theme but within the borders of 
Scotland. It is out of the materials there found that 
he has reared all his remarkable fabrics. Out of the 
simple story of a Carrick farmer, who went to market 
at the Town of Ayr, and got drunk, and rode home 
after night through a terrible tempest, he has, by 
interweaving into the narrative, the superstitions of 
the country about the places on the road, made one of 
the most remarkable poems ever produced by man. 
Considering the short time in which it was composed, 
between breakfast and dinner, it appers to me to stand 
forth as a work without parallel. I mean " Tam 



AS A POET. 77 

O'Shanter." Never were such various and discord- 
ant scenes presented by any poet, in such rapid tran- 
sitions, and in so few words, and yet with such 
perfect dehneation. The first four lines give as 
graphic a picture of a town late in the evening on a 
market-day, as can be well imagined. And a pic- 
ture, too, of a Scottish town. And who does not 
see, with his very eyes. Tarn's wife Kate ? 

" Gath'rin' her brows like gatli'rin' storm, 
Nursin' her wrath to keep it warm." 

And the portrait of Tam is a living reality : "A 
bletherin', blusterin', drunken blellum." This is 
his wife Kate's opinion of him, which she proves 
by a rehearsal of his woful deeds. And the aixn- 
able partner of his bosom, had predicted to his face 
an awful doom for her honest Tam. 

" She prophesy'd that, late or soon. 
Thou wad be found deep drown'd in Doon ! 
Or catch'd wi' warlocks i' the mirk, 
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk." 



Here then we have the hero and heroine of the tale, 
living before us, as familiar as neighbors. And in 
fact they were so intended to be by Burns — to be 
real Scottish folks of the olden time ; for the tale is 
a tradition. Before the tale begins then, we make, 
as it were, acquaintances of Tam and his wife Kate. 

"But to our tale: — Ae market night, 
Tam had got planted unco riglit ; 



78 R O B E R T B U R N S . 

Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, 
Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely ; 
An' at his elbow, Souter Johnny, 
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony ; 
Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ; 
They had been fou' for weeks thegither ! 
The night drave on wi' sangs an' clatter ; 
An' aye the ale was growing better : 
The landlady and Tarn grew gracious ; 
Wi' favors secret, sweet, and precious : 
The Souter tauld his queerest stories ; 
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : 
The storm without might rair and rustle, 
Ta/n did na mind the storm a whistle." 

Neither prose nor verse can farnish a more living 
picture of a merry little revel. Nothing could be 
sketched with more skill. Every incident is pre- 
sented at the very time, and in the very manner, 
which is best calculated to give most reality to the 
scene. 

" Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely, 
An' aye the ale was growing better." 

Just look how happily these two lines are introduced, 
as to time and incidents ! 

" The landlord's laugh was ready chorus." 

Could any thing be more skilful, than the way in 
which this line is thrown in ? You have not heard 
any thing of there being a landlord, until at the 
proper moment, he is presented in the most enliven- 
ing manner possible to description. And in how 



A8 A POET. 79 

few words is the whole scene sketched. This is the 
master-skill of description. Because you then see 
every thing at once. Every thing and every person 
are brought into unity of time and place. You see 
them together. 

" Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious !" 

Such is the happy state of Tam O'Shanter as the 
poet presents him in the first scene. 

" But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ! 
Or like the snowfall in the river, 
A moment white, — then melts forever ; 
Or like the borealis race, 
That flit ere you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form, 
Eva,nishing amid the storm." 

Were there ever such beautiful reflections upon 
such a scene ? And think of the suddenness of the 
transition of the poet's' mind, from sketching the 
scene, and then calling up such exquisite imagery 
to illustrate a moral truth which the scene and what 
was to follow, suggested to him. And what follows 
requires just as entire a shifting of the whole mood 
of the mind again. 

" Nae man can tether time or tide ; — 
The hour approaches, Tam maun ride ; 
That hour, o' night's black arch, the key-stane, 
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in ; 



80 R O B E K T B U R iN S . 

An' sic a night he takes the road in. 
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in/' 

This gives us a tolerable idea of the night, through 
which Tarn had to ride. But hear the poet describe 

it, 

" The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; 
Tlie rattling show'rs rose on the blast ; 
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd ; 
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd : 
That night, a child might understand, 
The De'il had business on his hand." 

How the awfulness of the tempest is heightened, by 
connecting it in the two last lines with the mystery 
of evil ! A more terrific and sublime description of 
a storm was never written. So much was never ut- 
tered in fewer words. And the last two lines is the 
highest effort of art to give a moral hue to material 
description. 

" Weel mounted on his gray mare, Meg, 
A better never lifted leg, 
Tarn skelpit on thro' dub an' mire. 
Despising wind, an' rain, an' fire : 
Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet; 
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet ; 
Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares, 
Lost bogles catch him unawares ; 
Kirk-x\lloway was drawing nigh. 
Whare ghaists an' houlets nightly cry. 

By this time he was cross the foord, 
Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd ; 



AS A POET. 81 

An' past tlie birks an" moikle stane 
Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane ; 
An' thro the whins, an' by the cairn, 
Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn ; 
An' near the thorn, aboon the well, 
Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. — 
Before him Doon pours a' his floods ; 
The doublin' storm roars thro' the woods ; 
The lightnings flash frae pole to pole ; 
Near and more near the thunders roll ; 
When, glimmerin' thro' the groanin' trees, 
Kirk-AUoway seem'd in a bleeze ; 
Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancin', 
An' loud resounded mirth an' dancin'. 

Inspirin' bold John Barleycorn ! 
What dangers thou canst mak us scorn ! 
Wi' tippenny, we fear nae evil ; 
Wi' usquabae we'll face the devil ! — 
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle, 
Fair play, he car'd na de'ils a boddle. 
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, 
Till, by the heel an' hand admonish'd, 
She ventur'd forward on the light ; 
An' vow ! Tam saw an unco sight ! 
Warlocks an' witches in a dance ; 
Nae cotillon brent new frae France, 
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, an' reels, 
Put life an' mettle i' their heels : 
A winnock-bunker i' the east, 
There sat auld Nick in shape o' beast ; 
A towzie tyke, black, grim and large, 
To gie them music was his charge ; 
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl 
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. — 
Coffins stood round, like open presses ; 
That shaw\l the dead in their last dresses ; 
4* 



82 ROBERTBUKNS. 

And by some dev'lish cantrip slight, 
Eacli in its cauld hand held a light, — 
By which heroic Tarn was able 
To note upon the haly table, 
A murderer's banes in gibbet aims ; 
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ; 
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, 
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ; 
Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted, 
Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted ; 
A garter, which a babe had strangled ; 
A knife, a father's throat had mangled, 
Whom his ain son o' life bereft. 
The gray hairs yet stack to the heft : 
Wi' mair o' horrible an' unlawfu'. 
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu'." 

I know of no human production which indicates 
higher art than is presented to us in this narrative. 
It is the very highest attainment of genius. The 
elements are worked together with a skill hardly to 
be paralleled. But it is that skill which is a native 
endowment of genius. It is beyond all rules. It is 
the spontaneous workings of the faculty divine. 
Look back over the narrative to the beginning, and 
see what a wonderful work is made out of such 
common materials. Nature weaves the rainbow 
out of water and light : but there the elements 
themselves are beautiful. But she also fabricates 
the glittering diamond from the charcoal. So gen- 
ius out of beauty's elements can weave beauty's 
fabrics. And when beauty's elements are denied to 
it, it pencils the rudest materials with the living 



AS A POET. 83 

light ol the immortal mind, and glorifies itself in 
making its divine riches visible to less gifted spirits, 
by imparting the glory of its nature to dull matter, 
in the works of its hands. And here in this tale of 
Tam O'Shanter, genius has shown its divine hand. 
The fingers which pressed the materials have left 
their own hues of glory upon them. The touch of 
Midas converted every thing into gold. But the 
touch of genius converts them into all that is most 
glorious to the fancy and most enrapturing to the 
heart. 

After Tam is mounted on his old mare, we for- 
get the storm which the poet had described with 
such power, though the impression of it is still upon 
our spirits, and we are now taken up with the aw- 
ful associations of the places he has to pass. But 
the poet, self-possessed and master of art, has the 
skill as well as the artistic conception to bring back 
into his description the awfulness of the tempest, to 
keep its effect alive in the mind, and to throw a still 
gloomier horror over the haunted places. 

" The doublin' storm roars thro' the woods ; 
The lightnings flash frae pole to pole ; 
Near and more near the thunders roll ; 
When, glimmerin' thro' the groanin' trees." 

Look back to the narrative, and see the happy maur 
ner in which these lines are introduced, at the most 
proper time, and in the truest order of incident. 
The groaning of the trees could not liave been de- 



84 R O B E 11 T B U R X S . 

picted to us without bringing in again the storm. 
Thus the poet manages to keep all the elements of 
the terrible constantly before us. But then he has 
also to exhibit constantly the element of the humor- 
ous, and in such a combination as to make the whole 
work true to nature, and true to the human mind. 
And this he does with a mastery most miraculous. 
In the weaving of the wonderful woof he never lets a 
thread fall ; but in his wildest flights, with the quick- 
est tact, he works each in at the very point, and 
at none other, which the greatest effect possible re- 
quires. 

" Inspirin' bold John Barleycorn ! 
What dangers thou canst mak us scorn ! 
Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil ; 
Wi' usquabae we'll face the devil. — 
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle, 
Fair play, he car'd na' de'ils a boddle. 
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, 
Till by the heel an' hand admonish'd." 

Look back and see how skilfully these lines are in- 
troduced. If the narrative had proceeded directly 
Kirk Alloway came in sight, to describe the scene 
within, the element of the horrible would have got- 
ten too great a preponderance, and the effect would 
not have been half as happy as it now is. But the 
introduction of these lines brings Tam, still drunk, 
before us on his old mare, and the consciousness that 
the horrors are all an illusion, is thereby better kept 
alive in us, as the poet intended they should be to 



AS A POET. 85 

the reader. For in fact, the poet himself is the only 
warlock who is conjuring up the scenes ; and we see 
that he is in reality talking to Tarn all the way. 
This is a striking peculiarity in this poem ; and it 
gives great life to it. But as the poet says of him- 
self, I must say of myself, as his critic, — 

" But here my muse her wing maun cow'r, 
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r." 

The reader must criticize the rest of Tam O'Shanter 
for himself 

I come now to speak of Burns as a satirist. And 
I announce it at once, that he has never been ex- 
celled in satire. With the high prerogative of 
genius, he has conceived satire in its truest form. 
And the subjects of his satires were the men and 
manners of Ayrshire. He deals not in mere com- 
mon-places, as suitable to the foibles of one age as 
another. But he satirizes the peculiar individuali- 
ties which he saw \.hen occupying the thoughts of 
his neighbors. His satires, hke his other poems, are 
histories of the times. Religious controversy had 
become general and bitter over Scotland; and as all 
thinking men took either one side or the other, 
Burns was drawn into the arena. And he was far 
the most dreaded foe in the whole field of warfare. 
His weapons were the most terrible, and were wield- 
ed with a skill which genius alone has as a gift be- 
yond all art. He took the quiver from nature her- 
self, and trimmed the arrows to suit himself; for in 

3 



86 



ROBERT BURNS 



satire, as in every thing else, he was entirely original. 
And although more natural than any other satirist, 
still his satires are further removed from ordinary 
trains of thought than those of any other poet. 
They are so unique as hardly to have resemblance 
enough to the satires of other poets, to enable us to 
characterize their peculiarities. They contain, in 
their highest perfection, all the elements of satire. 
Wit, humor, burlesque, drollery, caricature, person- 
ality in the utmost individuality of characteristic, 
description the most sprightly, all the various and 
most unexpected turns of epigram and insinuation, 
and the whole pervaded with the spirit of irony, are 
combined in his satires. The most daring satire 
ever written is '' Holy Willie's Prayer." And it is 
not possible to conceive a more effectual mode of ex- 
posing to contempt the creed of an individual and of 
his party, and at the same time the odiousness of 
the character of the individual, as it is moulded by 
that creed, than is exhibited in this satire. One's 
hair stands on end as he reads the blasphemous 
prayer. And yet, it cannot be doubted, that it ap- 
peared to many clergymen as well as laymen of that 
day, to be a fair exhibition, both theoretical and prac- 
tical, of the extravagant form which Calvinism had 
assumed in the creed of many. Taking into con- 
sideration the end aimed at, and no means within 
the compass of human genius could be more efFeCr 
tual. One sees with his very eyes the blasphemous 
creed, as it were, personated in the hoary hypocrite, 



AS A POET 



87 



as he profanes heaven with his prayers and with his 
thanks. And for scenic description, with all the 
picturesqueness of various incident, and for power 
of caricature with the utmost distortion of feature, 
yet entirely true to the possibilities of nature, no- 
thing ever exceeded " The Holy Fair." And for 
that personality which consists in portraits of indi- 
viduals, with their particular failings brought out in 
prominent relief, and their tender points exposed to 
ridicule, what can exceed "The Kirk's Alarm?" 
And who would not almost as leave be hanged and 
gibbeted, as to be one of the victims of ''The Twa 
Herds?" Nothing could be more withering than 
the irony which runs through this satire, giving 
causticity to the personal exposures of the individ- 
uals ridiculed. And I will not even ask the man 
to follow me in my criticism, who has ever read 
'' Death and Doctor Hornbook," without being amazed 
at the powers of the magician who could conjure up 
this wonderful satire. It is one of the most remark- 
able of Burns's productions. A very peculiar fea- 
ture of Burns's mind is exhibited in it : the capacity 
of being on terms of the most easy familiarity with 
every being, however supernatural. He meets Death, 
and mistaking him for a harvest hand, inquires 
whether he has been mowing, at a season when oth- 
ers are just sowing. The big scythe on his shoulder 
put this idea into the poet's head. And as it was 
dark, and there was a deep gully near where they 
were talking, Burns shows it to Death, lest he 



88 R B E R T B U R N S . 

might fall into it and hurt himself. And when they 
part, as though they were on perfect equality, Burns 
says with all nonchalance, — 

" I took the v/ay that pleas'd mysel', 
" And sae did Death. 

This same peculiarity is exhibited in the " Address 
to the Deil." It shows with what ease the poet 
handled his subjects. He never labors. His genius 
rather stoops than reaches up. As long as satire 
shall be relished, will these productions, which imi- 
tating none, are inimitable by any, stand forth as 
among the most perfect utterances of the satiric 
muse. The black ffall of " The English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers" is a pleasant draught in comparison 
vfith the various cups of Burns's satire. The first is 
all poison, the latter contains other ingredients which 
give a heightening to the sensibilities that renders 
the poison the more torturing. The spirit of the 
first is passionate hate, that of the other is ironical 
ridicule, laughing and sneering, making you see your 
own weaknesses in the mirror held up by the sati- 
rist, and that every-body else imbibing the spirit of 
the satirist, is laughing and sneering too. And this 
is satire in its truest form. 

As various as are the subjects over which we have 
passed, and they are but a few of those of which 
Burns has treated, yet he treated of none but real 
subjects. All his subjects belong to Scotland. They 
sprung up from the realities of Scottish life. 



AS A POET. 89 

I have not yet spoken of Burns as a moral didac- 
tic poet. Here he excels all others. The most 
manly morality, exhibited in the most living forms, 
pervades his writings. He had the faculty of exhib- 
iting abstract truths in such a way, as to give them 
all the force of the ideal conception embodied in the 
most captivating example. 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman ; 
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang. 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving why they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it." 

The singular beauty of the form in which the virtue 
of charity is here exhibited, is owing to the applica- 
tion of it to the actions of both man and woman ; 
thus giving the abstract truth all the life of which it 
is capable in example. There is nothing in which 
Burns more excels, than in distinct and fascinating 
exhibitions of moral truths. He is equally as pointed 
as Pope, and infinitely superior to him in every other 
quality of a didactic poet. 

" Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us, 
He knows each chord — its various tone, 

Each spring — its various bias : 
Then at the balance, let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 



90 



ROBERT BURNS. 



The truth set forth in these lines never has been as 
well expressed. And there is nothing outside of the 
Bible, better, either in the doctrines or the mode of 
expressing them, than the ^' Epistle to a Young 
Friend." It is marked by the most subtile apprehen- 
sion of the nicest shades of moral principles. And 
no poet was ever so remarkable as Burns, for con- 
necting high moral reflections with trivial incidents. 
This is the chief faculty of the didactic poet. 

" Ye ugly, creepin' blastit wonner, 
Detested, shunn'd, by saunt and sinner, 
How dare ye set your fit upon her, 
Sae fine a lady ! 
Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner, 
On some poor body. 

O' Jenny, dinna toss your head, 
An' set your beauties a' abread ! 
Ye little ken what cursed speed, 

The blastie's makin' ! 
Thae winks, and finger-ends, I dread. 

Are notice takin'. 

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us. 
To see oursels as others see us ! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us. 

An' foolish notion : 
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, 

And ev'n devotion!" 

But I must bring this part of my task to a close. 
The productions of a natural poet like Burns, are so 
suggestive, that criticism can hardly ever exhaust 
them. There is such a variety in Burns's represen- 



AS A POET. 91 

tations of even the most common things, that his 
descriptions of the flight of birds, would alone afford 
a prolific theme for criticism. He has an epithet 
suited to the peculiar noise that the wings of each 
kind of bird make. '' Chittering wings," " whist- 
ling wings," " flittering wings," " whirring wings," 
" clanging wings," and many other epithets are used 
in his descriptions of the flight of birds. And all 
other things are described with just as characteristic 
variety. And the elements which give most life to 
description, are always seized upon, and presented 
with singular felicity. In the description of inani- 
mate things, for instance, when the element of motion 
enters into them, he always brings out that element 
in clear relief, and thus gives to it the greatest life. 
This is seen in these Imes, — 

" The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam 
Crept, gently-crusting, o'er the glittering stream." 

We almost see the ice forming in this description. 
It shows with what subtilty Burns embodies the 
lively element of motion in his descriptions of na- 
ture. 

And the mere versification of Burns is extraordi- 
nary. He was master of the whole art of throwing 
his thoughts into musical diction, and of varying it 
with every fluctuation of thought and feeling. He 
possessed the greatest facility of inverting sentences, 
so as to give unexpected turns to thought, as well as 
to break the monotony of the rhythm ; and he had an 



92 ROBERTBURNS. 

almost Homeric power of compounding words, so im- 
portant in heightening our poetic conceptions by a 
cumulative meaning. Indeed most of those facilities 
of art, which are generally supposed to be the result 
of learned culture, are manifested in their highest 
forms by Burns. They were with him the gifts of 
genius. The extraordinary quickness and subtilty 
of his faculties, enabled him to seize, as by a divine 
tact, all the facilities of art. And when we come to 
criticize the works of a poet so full of nature, whose 
art is, in truth, nature, stiff* technical rules must be 
laid aside. The criticism of such works is no cold 
business. We must not come to the task with dull 
eyes, or dull ears, or above all, with dull hearts. All 
our faculties must be awake. If not inspired our- 
selves, we should be able to kindle at the inspiration 
of the poet. We should, as it were, drink in his 
genius, and see with his eyes, and hear with his 
ears, and feel with his heart, before we can fully 
comprehend the work of criticism. The superficial 
critic, who works by line and rule, and knows no 
metre and no harmony, but by the number of the 
syllables, and the exactness of the rhymes, must 
throw aside his bungling, clumsy, ignorant rules of 
pedantry, before he can understand even the elements 
of the various versification of Burns, — a versification 
as various as the emotions of that most variously 
tuned of all instruments, the human heart. He 
must learn that Burns, inspired by the genius of his 
country, caught the wild notes that came down from 



AS A FOE T. 93 

the hills, and the soft tunes that floated up from the 
vales of his native land, and wove into their melody, 
words expressive of the sentiments which the tunes 
themselves breathed into his soul. His songs were 
conceived and bodied forth in music. They are 
gems of thought floating in streams of music. The 
words and the tune are the song ; and not the words 
by themselves. To talk of number of syllables, and 
exactness of rhymes, as some have done in criticizing 
the songs of Burns, shows utter ignorance of the 
principles of enlightened criticism. Such critics 
must rise to a higher altitude in the domain of art. 
They must learn, that all that is highest in art, all 
that is creative and imaginative, lies beyond the 
guidance of any rule. The rules of art must al- 
ways fall short of the flights of genius. Genius will 
always accomplish something beyond any rule. Gen- 
ius is a rule to itself. Its works are beautiful, be- 
cause they are the works of genius. They are cast 
in a mould of beauty, and come forth impressed 
with the forms of beauty. It is always some great 
genius who conceives and embodies in form, the 
models of the beautiful in every art. His mind, en- 
dowed with a subtile perception, and an exquisite 
susceptibility to the beauties of nature, by the power 
of idealization, rises to a higher conception of the 
beautiful than any object of nature furnishes, and 
approximates nearer to the divine type, according to 
the great law of mental progress, by which man is 
gradually fitted for a higher order of realities. It is 



94 R O B E R '1' B II R N S . 

from the works of genius, that we are to learn the 
rules of art. We must study these works, until our 
duller natures catch the ethereal flame that breathes 
in them, and we are quickened into sympathy, and 
are thus elevated to a just comprehension of their 
beauties. These master minds are our lawgivers in 
the domain of art. They are our prophets standing 
between us and the kingdom of absolute beauty. It 
is their lips, that the coal from off the altar of nature 
has touched. We, the common folk, must listen to 
their teachings, if we wish to see, and hear, and feel, 
these higher beauties which it is not given our duller 
faculties to read for ourselves in the mysterious book 
of nature. When Michael Angelo drew the curve 
of the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, on the given 
height and breadth, he drew it according to that 
ideal of a waving line, which his divine genius had 
formed ; and its beauty fills every beholder with de- 
light. He had the compasses in his eye, the har- 
monic proportions in his soul. So, when Praxiteles 
embodied female beauty in the living marble of the 
Venus of C nidus, and Apelles painted it on the 
breathing canvas of the Venus of Cos, it was their 
genius fired at the sight of Phryne, the most beauti- 
ful woman of Greece, bathing on the sea-shore, that 
guided their hands in fashioning those master-pieces 
that fill the very air with beauty. So, nothing but 
genius guided Burns, when he threw into '' Tarn 
O'Shanter" that beautiful description of the evanes- 
cent nature of pleasures. It was geziius working by 



AS A POET. 95 

rules inherent in its own nature, that brought from 
the widely separate provinces of nature, the flower of 
the poppy, the snow-fall, the borealis, and the rain- 
bow, and combined them by the magic chain of 
poetic analogy, into that beautiful constellation of 
imagery. What rule of art could teach such work- 
manship ? And, indeed, what rules could have 
taught Burns how to compose so extraordinary a 
work as the whole poem ? None but the hand of a 
a master working by inspiration, and not by rule, 
could have brought such discordant materials in 
subjection to his will, so as to heighten with an un- 
earthly interest, the plainest humorous story. To 
work with such materials for such ends, requires a 
power and a skill beyond the reach of all rules. 

When, therefore, we criticize the works of Burns, 
we must look to their nature. We must ascertain 
what they mean. We must carry no theories of 
criticism to the task. We must not, like Carlyle, 
in criticizing " Tam O'Shanter," imagine a mystery, 
and dive into hidden depths to see what is only on 
the surface. Of all poets Burns saw most like com- 
mon people. All his ideals were but their concep- 
tions exalted. This is the secret of that spell of 
sympathy which the common mind feels in his poe- 
try. Being the sincerest of men, and extraordina- 
rily susceptible, his songs are peculiarly the expres- 
sion of his spontaneous feelings. In criticizing these 
especially, we must look into the human heart, and 
see how truly the emotions so various and often so 



96 R O 13 E R T B U R N S . 

conflicting are expressed. Does the heart, when 
stirred to its depths, always throb in orderly ca- 
dences ? Are there no sudden impulses, no thrills, 
no gushes of feeling ? Do no abrupt, irregular, con- 
fused thoughts stir its emotions into abrupt, irregu- 
lar, confused eddies? How could regular pauses, 
measured swells, and uniform cadences, express these 
abrubt, irregular emotions? As are the emotions 
and thoughts, so must be the vehicles of verse. 
Burns' s fine genius was working according to these 
principles of art, founded in human nature, when he 
wrote those songs so deficient in exact rhyme, as his 
" Highland Mary." It was agreeable to his own 
heart thus to sing ; and when the music to which 
they were composed is carried along with the words, 
as it was by the poet while composing the songs, what 
are now considered defects in the rhymes, will be 
found to have their completeness in the tune. The 
chords of every human heart vibrate the same notes 
under the same touches of nature ; and as those 
higher minds are tuned the best, we must tune our 
dull hearts in concord, in order to catch the true 
music of the soul. 

But let it not be supposed that I think rules of 
criticism cannot aid us in judging of works of art. 
They may not only enable us to judge of works of art, 
but also may assist our judgments in forming works 
of our own. But then, in our criticism, we must 
distinguish between that part of the work of art 
which is far beyond the reach of any rule, and that 



AS A POET. 



97 



to which rules can be applied. Burns himself has 
clearly set forth this distinction. "Though the 
rough material (says he) of fine writing, is undoubt- 
edly the gift of genius, the workmanship is as cer- 
tainly the united efforts of labor, attention, and 
pains." Now the rough material, all that is creat- 
ive and imaginative, whicli is the gift of genius, lies 
beyond the application of any rule ; but the work- 
manship, by which this material is elaborated, is 
within the province of rules. But even within the 
province where rules of criticism can be appUed, we 
must be certain that our rules are founded in na- 
ture. And this is no easy matter. For the preju- 
dices of education so warp our judgments and our 
tastes, that the most unnatural things often seem 
beautiful ; and in our narrow views of art, we re- 
strain within artificial limits the rich and various 
luxuriance of nature, and thus cramp the energy 
and extmguish the fire of genius. Burns, in his 
remarks upon Scotch songs, has said something so 
apposite to the tenor of the doctrmes I am advancing, 
that I Avill quote them. " There is a great irregu- 
larity in the old Scotch songs, — a redundancy of 
syllables wdth respect to that exactness of accent 
and measure that the English poetry requires, — but 
which glides in most melodiously with the respec- 
tive tunes to which they are set. For instance, the 
fine old song of ' The xMill, Mill O,'— to give it a 
plain prosaic reading, it lialts prodigiously out of 
measure. On the other hand, tlie song set to the 



98 R O B E R T B U R N S . 

same tune in ' Bremen's Collection of Scottish Songs,* 
which begins, ' To Fanny fair could I impart, &c.,' 
it is most exact measure ; and yet, let them both be 
sung before a real critic, — one above the biases of pre- 
judice, but a thorough judge of nature, how flat and 
spiritless will the last appear, how trite and lamely 
methodical, compared with the wild, warbling ca- 
dence, — the heart-moving melody of the first. This 
is particularly the case with all those airs which end 
with a hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of 
wild irregularity in many of the compositions and 
fragments which are daily sung to them by my 
compeers, — the common people, — a certain happy 
arrangement of old Scottish syllables, and yet, very 
frequently nothing, — not even like rhyme, — or same- 
ness of jingle at the end of the lines. This has 
made me sometimes imagine, that perhaps it might 
be possible for a Scotch poet, with a nice judicious 
ear, to set compositions to many of our most favor- 
ite airs, — particularly the class of them mentioned 
above, independently of rhyme altogether." This 
ingenious and philosophical criticism, shows what a 
delicate tact Burns had, in seizing the nicer shades 
of the principles of versification. And it proves too, 
that however spontaneous the effusions of genius 
may be, still these master minds comprehend better 
than all others, the principles of their art. What in 
those old Scottish songs would to a mind, trained by 
the rules of a certain school of criticism, appear ex- 
ceedingly crude and uncouth, is in reality a beauty 



AS A POET. 99 

founded on a reason in nature. They are composed 
according to nature's prosody, and not according to 
the prosody of narrow art. The criticism which 
finds fault with these songs, on account of their de- 
fective rhymes, assumes that rhyme is essential to 
all compositions intended to be set to music. Noth- 
ing can be more erroneous. Neither the Greeks nor 
the Romans used rhyme. Their lyrical, as well as 
their other poetry, is untrammelled by any such fet- 
ters, or if you please, unaided by any such artistic 
help. xVnd if Anacreon could look over modern lyr- 
ical poetry, it is not improbable that, so far from 
considering rhyme an improvement in versification, 
he would view it somewhat after the manner of 
Hudibras : — 

" For rhyme the rudder is, of verses, 
With which, like ships, they steer their courses." 

It is quite certain, that whatever versification may 
gain from the help of rhyme, it certainly is apt to 
lose that melody of rhythm which is dependent on 
a certain happy arrangement of words, and that va- 
riety of cadence which results from the spontaneous 
'^ flow of thoughts that voluntary move harmonious 
numbers." This criticism of Hudibras has more in 
it than mere wit. Rhyme is apt to become a mere 
rudder by which the verse is steered. The versifica- 
tion is apt to become mere see-saw. At the time 
Burns wrote this criticism, he was not aware, I pre- 
sume, that rhyme was not used in ancient lyrical 



100 ROBERT BURNS. 

poetry, or he could not have doubted that composi- 
tions without rhyme were fit to be set to music. 
His wider literary experience afterwards doubtless 
gave him fuller information. 

The truth is, the rules of criticism, even in that 
part of art where rules can be applied, have all along 
been too narrow. They are almost exclusively 
founded on the experience of one nation, and that 
the earliest in European civilization. The world 
has appeared to think that there is not a grace 
which Grecian art did not catch. That in litera- 
ture, and sculpture, and architecture, the Greeks 
attained not only the highest, but every form of 
beauty possible in art. However true it may be, 
that they attained the highest beauty, still the ex- 
perience of modern times has shown, that there are 
other forms of beauty within the capabilities of art, 
than those bodied forth by Grecian genius. The 
enlightened critic will therefore look over the wide 
and diversified domain of art, with that enlarged 
and liberal view, which the expectation of seeing 
new forms of the beautiful developed, is calculated 
to inspire, and approve every beauty which seems 
such to his enlightened judgment, untrammelled 
by the rules of established criticism. It is in this 
spirit that I desire the works of Burns to be ex- 
amined. And it is in this spirit that the world does, 
and will continue to examine them. There is a 
potency about them, which smites the heart, and 
makes it swell out of the shackles of cold criticism. 



AS A POET. 101 

They vindicate by their power, their high place in 
the temple of fame. The fame of Burns has been 
continually progressive. In Scotland every heart is 
warm at the name of their great national poet ; and 
the world is now filled with a scarcely less warm 
admiration. 

" As the sun from out the orient 

Pours a wider, warmer light, 
Till he floods both earth and ocean, 

Blazing from the zenith's height ; 
So the glory of our poet, 

In its deathless power serene. 
Shines, — as rolling time advances. 

Warmer felt, and wider seen : 
First Boon's banks and braes contain'd it, 

Then his country form'd its span ; 
Now the wide world is its empire, 

And its throne the heart of man." 



BURNS AS A MAN. 



We have considered Burns as a poet, let us now 
consider him as a man. In his twenty-third year, 
we find him engaged in the business of flax-dresser 
in the little town of Irvine. His condition may be 
inferred from the following letter, written by him at 
that time to his father : — 

*' Honored Sir, — 

" I have purposely delayed writing, in the hope 
that I should have the pleasure of seeing you on 
New- Year's day ; but work comes so hard upon 
us, that I do not choose to be absent on that 
account, as well as for some other little reasons, 
which I shall tell you at meeting. My health is 
nearly tlie same as when you were here, only my 
sleep is a little sounder, and on the whole I am 
rather better than otherwise, though I mend by 
very slow degrees. The weakness of my nerves 
has so debilitated my mind, that I dare neither 
review past wants, nor look forward into futurity ; 
for the least anxiety or perturbation in my breast 
produces most unhappy effects on my whole frame. 



AS A MAN. 108 

Sometimes, indeed, when for an hour or two my 
spirits are alightened, I glimmer a little into fu- 
turity ; but my principal, and indeed ray only pleas- 
urable employment, is looking backwards and for- 
wards in a moral and religious way : I am quite 
transported at the thought, that ere long, perhaps 
very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all tiie 
pains, and uneasiness, and disquietudes of this weary 
life : for I assure you I am heartily tired of it ; and, 
if I do not very much deceive myself, I could con- 
tentedly and gladly resign it. 

' The soul, uneasy, and confin'd at home, 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.' 

It is for this reason I am more pleased with the 15th 
16th and 17th verses of the 7th chapter of Revela- 
tions, than with any ten times as many verses in the 
whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble en- 
thusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that 
this world has to offer. As for this world, I despair 
of ever making a figure in it. I am not formed for 
the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. 
I shall never again be capable of entering into such 
scenes. Indeed, I am altogether unconcerned at the 
thoughts of this life. I foresee that poverty and ob- 
scurity probably await me, and I am in some meas- 
ure prepared, and daily preparing to meet them. I 
have but just time and paper to return you my 
gi-ateful thanks for the lessons of virtue and piety 
you have given me, which were too much neglected 



104 



ROBERT BURNS 



at the time of giving them, but which I hope have 
been remembered ere it is too late. Present my du- 
tiful respects to my motherland my compliments to 
Mr. and Mrs. Muir ; and with wishing you a merry 
New- Year's day, I shall conclude. 

*' I am, honored Sir, your faithful son, 

Robert Burns. 
"P. S. My meal is nearly out ; but I am going 
to borrow till I get more." 

What an awful letter this is for a young man 
only in his twenty 'third year to write ! Just en- 
tered upon the threshold of life, and already 
" heartily tired of it !" What is the cause of this 
unnatural state of mind ? "As for this world (says 
he) I despair of ever making a figure in it. I fore- 
see that poverty and obscurity probably await me." 
It is ambition stirring in a mind conscious of its 
own vast powers, yet doomed to dress flax, that has 
sunk the soul of this young man into the blackest 
depths of despondency. '' My meal is nearly out, 
but I am going to borrow till I get more." What a 
statement to come from the lips of one of the proud- 
est and most ambitious spirits whom God ever en- 
dowed with a lofty genius ! He was living on oat 
bread made of meal sent him by his father. And 
his meal was out, and he had to borrow till he could 
get more. Is it any wonder, his heart sunk chill 
within him ? And to whom is this letter written ? 
To his father. And who is his father ? A peasant. 



AS A MAN. 105 

So predominant is ambition in the mind of this 
young man, that though writing to a peasant father, 
who could hardly appreciate it, he assigns ambition 
as the cause of his deep melancholy which he was 
divulging to him. 

This is an important point, from which to look 
backwards as well as forwards over the life of Burns. 
We have seized one prominent trait in his character, 
ambition; and we find him in his twenty-third year 
in the most abject poverty, dressing flax in a little 
town. Let us then look back over his life before 
this period, and see what this ambitious young man, 
of such extraordinary endowments, had been doing 
in the world. Let him speak for himself. 

"I was born (says he.) a very poor man's son. 
For the first six or seven years of my life my father 
was gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate 
in the neighborhood of Ayr. Had he continued in 
that station, I must have marched off to be one of 
the little underlings about a farm-house ; but it was 
his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power 
to keep his children under his own eye, till they 
could discern between good and evil ; so, with the 
assistance of his generous master, my father ven- 
tured on a small farm on his estate. Though it 
cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an 
excellent English scholar ; and by the time I was 
ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substan- 
tives, verbs and particles. In my infant and boyish 
days, too, T owed much to an old woman who ro- 
5* 



106 ROBERT RURNS. 

sided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, 
credulity and superstition. She had, I suppose, the 
largest collection in the country of tales and songs 
concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, 
warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, 
wraiths, apparitions, cantrips, giants, enchanted 
towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This culti- 
vated the latent seeds of poetry ; but had so strong 
an effect on ray imagination, that to this hour, in 
nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look- 
out in suspicious places ; and though nobody can 
be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet 
it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off 
their idle terrors. 

" My father's generous master died ; the farm 
proved a ruinous bargain ; and to clench the misfor- 
tune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for 
the picture I have drawn of one in my tale of ' The 
Twa Dogs.' My father was advanced in life when he 
married ; I was the eldest of seven children, and he, 
w^orn out by early hardships, was unfit for labor. My 
father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily bro- 
ken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years 
more, and to weather these two years, we retrenched 
our expenses. We lived very poorly. I was a dex- 
terous ploughman for my age ; and the next oldest 
to me was a brother (Gilbert) who could drive the 
plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. 
A novel-writer might, perhaps, have viewed these 
scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I. Mv 



AS A MAN. 107 

iiidignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoun- 
drel factor's insolent threatening letters, which used 
to set us all in tears. This kind of life, — the cheer- 
less gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a 
galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year. My 
father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his 
lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten 
miles farther in the country. It is during the time 
that we lived on this farm that my little story is 
most eventful. I was at the beginning of this pe- 
riod, perhaps the most ungainly awkward boy in 
the parish — no solitaire was less acquainted with 
the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient 
story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's 
Geographical Grammars ; and the ideas I had 
formed of modern manners, of literature, and criti- 
cism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's 
works, some plays of Shakspeare, Tull and Dickson 
on Agriculture, The Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the 
Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History of the 
Bible, Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Boyle's 
Lectures, Allan Ramsay's works, Taylor's Scripture 
Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of 
English Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, had 
formed the whole of my reading. The collection 
of songs was my vade mecum. I pored over them 
driving my cart or walking to labor, song by song, 
verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, or 
sublime, from affectation or fustian. I am con- 
vinced I owe to this practice much of my critic 
craft, such as it is. 



108 ROBERT BURNS. 

^' In my seventeenth year, to give my manners a 
brush, I went to a country dancmg-school. My 
father had an unaccountable antipathy to these 
meetings, and my going was, what to this moment 
I repent, in opposition to his wishes. The great 
misfortune of my life was to want an aim. I had 
felt early some stirrings of ambition, but they were 
the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the 
walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation en- 
tailed on me perpetual labor. The only two open- 
ings by which I could enter the temple of fortune, 
were the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of 
little chicaning bargaining. The first is so con- 
tracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself 
into it — the last I always hated — there was contam- 
ination in the very entrance ! Thus abandoned of 
aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for socia- 
bility, as well from native hilarity as from a pride 
of observation and remark ; a constitutional melan- 
choly or hypochondriasm that made me fly solitude ; 
add to these incentives to social life, my reputation 
for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical talent, 
and a strength of thought something like the rudi- 
ments of good sense ; and it will not seem surpris- 
ing that I w^as generally a welcome guest where I 
visited, or any wonder that always, where two or 
three met together, there was I among them. But 
far beyond all other impulses of my heart was un 
penchant a Vadorable moitie du g-ense Jmmain. 
My heart was completely tinder, and was eternallv 



AS A MA i\ . 109 

lighted up by some goddess or other ; and, as in 
every other warfare in this world, my fortune was 
various ; sometimes I was received with favor, and 
sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the 
plough, scythe, or reap-hook, I feared no competitor ; 
and thus I set absolute want at defiance ; and as I 
never cared farther for my labors than while I was 
in actual exercise, I spent the evenings in the way 
after my own heart. A country lad seldom carries 
on a love adventure without an assisting confidant. 

'' I possessed a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dex- 
terity, that recommended me as a proper second on 
these occasions ; and, I dare say, I felt as much 
pleasure in being in the secret of half the lovers of 
the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman in 
knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe. 
The very goose-feather in my hand seems to know 
instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, 
the favorite theme of my song ; and is with difficulty 
restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs 
on the love-adventures of my compeers, the humble 
inmates of the farm-house and cottage ; but the 
grave sons of science, ambition, or avarice, baptize 
these things by the name of follies. To the sons of 
labor and poverty, they are matters of the most se- 
rious nature ; to them, the ardent hope, the stolen 
interview, the tender farewell, are the gi'catest and 
most delicious parts of their enjoyments. 

" Another circumstance in my life, which made 
some alteration in mv mind and manners, was, that 



110 ROBERT BURNS. 

I spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling coast, 
a good distance from home, at a noted school, to 
learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c., in which 
I made a pretty good progress. But I made greater 
progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contra- 
band trade was at that time very successful, and it 
sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who 
carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roar- 
ing dissipation were, till this time new to me ; but 
I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I 
learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a 
drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand 
with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a 
month which is always a carnival in my bosom, 
when a charming fillete^ who lived next door to the 
school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a 
tangent from the spheres of my studies. I, however, 
struggled on with my sines and co-sines, for a few 
days more ; but stepping into the garden one charm- 
ing noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my 
angel, 

' Like Proserpine gathering flowers, 
Herself a fairer flower.' 

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at 
school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing 
but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal 
out to meet her ; and the two last nights of my stay 
in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image 
of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless. 



AS A MAN. 



Ill 



" I returned home very considerably improved. 
My reading was enlarged with the important addi- 
tion of Thomson's and Shenstone's works ; I had 
seen human nature in a new phasis ; and I engaged 
several of my school-fellows to keep up a literary cor- 
respondence with me. This improved me in com- 
position. I had met with a collection of letters by 
the wits in Queen Anne's reign, and 1 pored over 
them most devoutly. I kept copies of any of my 
own letters that pleased me, and a comparison be- 
tween them and the composition of most of my cor- 
respondents, flattered my vanity. I carried this 
whim so far, that though I had not three farthings' 
worth of business in the world, yet almost every 
post brought me as many letters as if I had been a 
broad plodding son of the day-book and ledger. 

" My life flowed on much in the same course till 
my twenty-third year. Vive Pamour, et vive la 
bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The 
addition of two more authors to my library gave me 
great pleasure. Sterne and Mackenzie — Tristram 
Shandy and the Man of Feeling were my bosom 
favorites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my 
mmd, but it was only indulged in according to the 
humor of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or 
more pieces on hand : I took up one or other, as it 
suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dis- 
missed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My 
passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many 
devils till they got vent in rhyme ; and then con- 



112 ROBERT BURNS. 

ning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into 
quiet I None of the rhymes of those days are in 
print, except ' Winter, a Dirge,' the eldest of my 
printed pieces, ^ The Death of poor Mailie,' ' John 
Barleycorn,' and songs, first, second, and third. 
Song second was the ebullition of that passion vv^hich 
ended the forementioned school business. 

" My twenty- third year was to me an important 
one. Partly through whim, and partly, that I 
wished to set about doing something in life, I joined 
a flax-dresser in a neighboring town, (Irvine,) to 
learn his trade." 

We have now come to the time in Burns's life, 
when we found him writing that most melancholy 
letter. We have seen, from his own account of 
himself, that when a mere boy, he had read Locke's 
Essay on the Human Understanding ; and that he 
had resorted to the most laborious means of improv- 
ing his mind ; having already realized the superior- 
ity of his endowments. Surely, the boy who had 
not only the talent to relish, but the ambition also 
to read, such a work as Locke's Essay, could not 
but despond at finding himself, in his twenty-third 
year, drudging as a flax-dresser, in a little town, 
and living chiefly on oat-bread, made sometimes of 
borrowed meal. The letter, with which I have 
ushered in his life, lifts the veil from his heart, and 
lays bare the secret agonies. And what bosom, not 
dead to all feeling for another's woe, can contemplate^ 
the struggles, without a tear ? "I felt early, (savs 



AS A MAN. 113 

he,) some strivings of ambition, but they were the 
blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls 
of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on 
me perpetual labor. The only two openings, by 
which I could enter the temple of fortune, were the 
gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little 
chicaning bargaining. The first is so contracted 
an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it — 
the last I always hated — ^there was contamination in 
the very entrance." If this be a description of his 
feelings and situation when he was a mere boy, 
what must have been the desolation of his heart, 
when at twenty-three, with his soul reaching up in 
high aspirations, he was but a flax-dresser ? " The 
blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls 
of his cave," though so grand a description of cir- 
cumvented ambition, must be but a feeble represen- 
tation of the feelings and struggles of Robert Burns 
at this time. He had been beset with as many 
difficulties as ever lay in the path of man. Pov- 
erty of the abject sort, his father broken do^vn 
in spirit and in health, himself the eldest of seven 
children, the whole family often set into tears by 
the insolent letters of a landlord's factor, — ''the 
cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing 
moil of a galley-slave," — ^made up the chief thread 
of the history of his life. And yet he had fought 
manfully through all. He had cultivated his mind 
more than most young men who have the best op- 
portunities ; and so desirous was he of every accom- 



114 ROBERT BURNS. 

plishment, that, against his father's strong dissent, 
he went to dancing school. How does this portion 
of the life of Burns impress us with the greatness 
of his mind, the strength of his will, and the natural 
nobility of his character. For what was he thus 
struggling up against the ills of life, and cultivating 
his proud and sensitive spirit, when it was already 
too great for his situation ? There was no field of 
exertion into which he could enter, to reap those 
trophies of renown, which his ambitious spirit was 
burning to win, not for his own glory alone, but for 
the good of his country and of his kind. Conscious 
of a mind of the first order, with a penetrating glance 
that went up from earth to heaven, and comprehend- 
ed the scheme of creation ; and fully appreciating 
the true dignity of man, and panting to enter on the 
highest arenas of life, and in noble efforts of enter- 
prise and duty to assert his right to the first position 
of honor, and thus satisfy the gulf-like cravings 
which the Creator had given to his great soul for 
these noble purposes, he found himself tied down to 
the meanest, dreariest, most withering servile work. 
And even hope could hardly throw a cheering glimmer 
into the future. The aristocratic institutions of his 
country precluded all hope of entrance into any of 
the higher occupations of life, even if his own poverty 
had not stood in the way. He knew — he realized 
in his very soul — that fortune was against him. So 
far as he could see, the only entrance for him into 
her temple, was through "the gate of niggardly 



AS A MAN. 115 

economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain- 
ing." His great soul could not be dwarfed, so as 
to squeeze through such little apertures as these. 
He must enter with true nobility, in at the gilded 
doorway, or not at all. He must fill a niche, ap- 
propriate to the divine glories of intellect, and not 
squat on the floor, amongst the bloated toads of 
wealth. The great genius of Burns, felt its high 
behest ; and it was longing to fulfil it in some 
way. 

Burns was not doomed to the drudgery of dress- 
ing flax, long. The shop, with its contents, was 
destroyed by fire, and he was left without sixpence. 
His father's misfortunes, too, were gathering around 
in still darker clouds. " A difference commencing 
(says Burns) between him and his landlord, as to 
the terms, after three years' tossing and whirling in 
the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved 
from the horrors of a jail by a consumption, which, 
after two years' promises, kindly stepped in and car- 
ried him away, to where the wicked cease from 
troubling, and the weary are at rest. When my 
father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that 
gi'owl in the kennels of justice : but we made a 
shift to collect a little money in the family amongst 
us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and 
I took a neighboring farm. I entered on this farm 
with a full resolution, — ' Come, go to ; I will be 
wise !' I read farming books, I calculated crops, I 
attended markets, and m short, in spite of t-he devil, 



116 ROBERT BURNS. 

and the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have 
been a wise man ; but the first year, from unfortu- 
nately buying bad seed, the second, from a late har- 
vest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my 
wisdom." 

But all this could not crush the brave spirit of 
Robert Burns. Providence had devolved upon him 
the care and support of his father's family ; and his 
noble heart was willing to submit to any drudgery 
in the performance of so sacred a duty. But then, 
he had not a soul to be harnessed like an ox, to 
everlasting toil. The eagle is constrained by its 
very nature, to soar aloft on its strong wings, and 
gaze with its fiery eye on the full splendors of the 
sun. So genius, by its very spiritual necessities, is 
compelled to ascend to that region of grand contem- 
plations, where the visions of fancy are spread out 
in all their various glory. And Burns had found 
out, that poetry was the province in which his 
genius might find food for its cravings, and scope 
for its achievements. We have seen, that in his 
sixteenth year, he had tuned his lyre to sing a 
song of love. And from that time he had never 
hung it upon the willows. It had now become nec- 
essary to his happiness. 

" Leeze me on rhyme ! it's aye a treasure, 
My chief, amaist, my only pleasure, 
At hame, a-fiel', at wark, or leisure, 

The Muse, poor hizzie ! 
Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure, , 

She 's seldom lazy." 



AS A MAN. 



117 



But let us return to our conversation with Burns ; 
for an autibiography when written by a sincere man, 
is like a conversation, and is the next best means of 
getting at his character. " I now began (says he) 
to be known in the neighborhood as a maker of 
rhymes. The first of my poetic ofTsprmg that saw 
the light, was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel 
between two reverend Calvinists, both of them dra- 
matis personce m my * Holy Fair.' I had a notion 
myself that the piece had some merit : but to pre- 
vent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend, who 
was very fond of such things, and told him that I 
could not guess who was the author of it, but that I 
thought it pretty clever. With a certain description 
of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of 
applause. ' Holy Willie's Prayer' next made its 
appearance, and alarmed the Kirk-session so much 
that they held several meetings, to look over their 
spiritual artillery, if happily any of it might be 
pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, 
my wanderings led me on another side within point- 
blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the un- 
fortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, 
' The Lament.' This was a most melancholy affair, 
which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very 
nearly given me one or two of the principal qualities 
for a place among those who have lost the chart, and 
mistaken the reckoning of rationality. I gave up 
my part of the farm to my brother ; in truth it was 
only nominally mine ; and made what little prepara- 



^ 118 ROBERT BURNS. 

tion was in my power for Jamaica. But before 
leaving my native country forever, I resolved to pub- 
lish my poems. I weighed my productions as im- 
partially as was in my power ; I thought they had 
merit, and it was a delicious idea that I should be 
called a clever fellow, even though it should never 
reach my ears, — a poor negro-driver, — or perhaps a 
victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the 
world of spirits I I can truly say that pauvre in- 
connu, as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an 
idea of myself and of my works as I have at this 
moment, when the public has decided in their favor. 
It ever was my opinion that the mistakes and blun- 
ders, both in a rational and religious point of view, 
of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to 
their ignorance of themselves. — To know myself had 
been all along my constant study. I weighed my- 
self alone ; I balanced myself with others ; I watched 
every means of information, to see how much ground 
I occupied as a man and as a poet ; I studied assid- 
uously nature's design in my formation, — where the 
lights and shadows in my character were intended. 
I was pretty confident my poems would meet with 
some applause ; but at the worst the roar of the At- 
lantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the 
novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neg- 
lect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had 
got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. 
My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I 
met with from the public. And besides, I pocketed, 



AS A MAN. 119 

all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This 
sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of in- 
denting myself, for want of money to procure my 
passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, 
the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a 
steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail 
from the Clyde, for 

' Hungry ruin had me in the wind.' 

I had been for some days skulking from covert to 
covert, under all the terrors of a jail ; as some ill- 
advised people had uncoupled the merciless pack of 
the law at my heels. I had taken the last farewell 
of my friends ; my chest was on the road to Gree- 
noch ; I had composed the last song I should ever 
measure in Caledonia, — ' The Gloomy Night is gath- 
ering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a 
friend of mine, overthrew all my schemes, by open- 
ing new prospects to my poetic ambition. The doc- 
tor belonged to a set of critics, for whose applause 
I had not dared to hope. His opinion, that I would 
meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second 
edition, fired me so much that away I posted for that 
city without a single acquaintance, or a single letter 
of introduction. The baneful star that had so long 
shed its blasting influence in my zenith, for once 
made a revolution to the nadir ; and a kind Provi- 
dence placed me under the patronage of one of the 
noblest of men, the Earl of Glencairn. 



120 ROBERT BURNS. 

'^ I need relate no farther. At Edinburgh 1 was in 
a new world ; I mingled among many classes of men, 
but all of them new to me, and I was all attention 
to ' catch' the characters and ' the manners living as 
they rise.' Whether I have profited, time will show." 

We have thus traced Burns through the trying 
vicissitudes of his life, up to the period when he was, 
by a most unexpected event, just as he was on the 
way to embark as an exile for a foreign land, made 
to hope that his own dear country might still be his 
home. My heart has often been moved by a broth- 
er's love for Burns, at the troubles which his genius, 
no less than his indiscretions, brought upon him. I 
have often pictured him to myself, in a foreign land, 
and the recollections of home rushing on his tender 
heart. Let any one, who has ever fully realized the 
true pathos of that song by Byron, " When I left thy 
shores O Naxos," as it is sung to its kindred Greek 
air, and when his heart is melted, as it cannot but 
be, by the stanzas, — 

" When some hand the strain awaking, 
Of my home, my native shore, 
Then 'twas first I wept, O Naxos, 
That I ne'er should see thee more ;" 

consider Avhat would have been the feelings of the 
far tenderer heart of Burns in exile, " when some 
hand the strain awaking, of his home, his native 
shore !" The recollections of his early home on the 
banks of the Ayr, would have broken his heart. 



A S A M A N . 121 

Providenco would not put this woe of exile into the 
cup of his afHiction. Ravished by the strains of his 
lyre, the critics of the British Athens, called him 
from his despair, to honor him in the metropolis of 
his country. Let us follow him in his pilgrimage. 

Burns, now in his twenty-seventh year, set out on 
foot for Edinburgh, and arrived there the last of No- 
vember, 1786. So fatigued was he by the walk, that 
for two days he was unable to leave his room. He 
shared the apartment and bed of a young friend, a 
Mr. Richmond, in an obscure boarding-house. He 
had come to Edinburgh without a single letter of 
introduction. And he knew no one of note except 
the celebrated Dugald Stewart, with whom he had 
once dined in Ayrshire. The object of his visit was 
to publish a second edition of his poems ; and they 
had been read, by the high and the low, the lettered 
and the unlettered, and were equally admired by all. 
It was soon heard, that the author of these singular 
productions was in the city. Curiosity was of course 
alive to see this poet from the plough. A prospectus 
for the publication of the poems was drawn out, and 
a vast number were printed and circulated ; and 
subscriptions came pouring in wdth a rapidity then 
unknown in the history of Scottish literature. The 
nobility, the men of letters, the husbandmen, the 
shepherds, the mechanics, all subscribed in a liberal 
manner. The Caledonian Hunt, an association of 
the chief of the northern nobility, took one hundred 
copies ; Creech the publisher took five hundred ; the 



122 ROBERT BURNS. 

Earl of Eglinton, forty-two ; the Duchess of Gordon, 
twenty-one ; the Earl of Glencairn and his Coun- 
tess, twenty-four ; the Scots College at Valladolid, 
the Scots College at Douay, the Scots College at 
Paris, the Scots Benedictine Monastery at Ratisbon, 
all took copies ; and many other persons subscribed 
for a large number of copies. Blair, Robertson, 
Blacklock, Smith, Ferguson, Stewart, Mackenzie, 
Tytler, and Lords Craig and Monbaddo carried sub- 
scription lists in their pockets, and procured names 
through their wide acquaintance. Burns had thus 
fully succeeded in the publication of his poems. 

But the great point of interest is, how did Burns 
himself appear to the polite and learned circles of 
Edinburgh ? Never in the history of the world was 
any one ushered by so sudden a transition from the 
humblest life into the most elevated. It seems al- 
most incredible, that any one under such circum- 
stances could deport himself properly. A man from 
the plough, who had been working on no higher 
wages than seven pounds a year, translated at once 
into as cultivated a society as any in the world ! 
But the universal testimony is, that all were as 
much charmed by the propriety of his manners, as 
by the mastery of his genius. Perhaps no man ever 
possessed greater conversational powers. The high- 
est eloquence, the tenderest pathos, the keenest wit, 
the broadest and the merriest humor, the quickest 
and most brilliant sallies of repartee, were the ready 
elements of his conversation, Avhich could be combined 



A S A M A N . 123 

and varied at will, so as to suit every occasion, give 
interest to every fact, kindle up every feeling, mould 
every heart into any mood which suited either the 
wisdom, the folly, or the caprice of the moment. 
When he went to any of the neighboring towns, as 
soon as it was known that Burns was at the tavern, 
the servants and the hostlers would leave their work, 
and go to catch some electric sentence from his lips. 
Their dull hearts were kindled into joyousness by 
the scintillations of his fancy, and they gloried in 
being drawn by the attractions of his genius into the 
magic circle of its enchantments. All this sorcery 
could Burns exercise over the minds and hearts of 
the common people. Let us see, then, how these 
powers availed him in the learned, the polite, and 
brilliant society of the highest walks of life. 

Dugald Stewart, a cool and sagacious philosopher, 
accustomed to all the conventionalities of polite so- 
ciety, and by his whole manner of life disposed to 
ascribe as much as possible to the force of learning, 
gives this account of Burns, in a letter to Dr. Cur- 
rie : '' The first time I saw Robert Burns was on the 
23rd of October, 1786, when he dined at my house in 
Ayrshire, together with our common friend, Mr. John 
Mackenzie, surgeon in Mauchline, to whom I am 
indebted for the pleasure of his acquaintance. I am 
enabled to mention the date particularly, by some 
verses which Burns wrote after he returned home, 
and in which the day of our meeting is recorded. I 
cannot positively say at this distance of time, whe- 



124 ROBERT BURNS. 

ther at the period of our first acquaintance, the Kil- 
marnock edition of his poems had been just pub- 
lished, or was yet in press. I suspect that the latter 
M^as the case, as I have still in my possession copies, 
in his own hand- writing, of some of his favorite per- 
formances, particularly of his verses, ' On turning up 
a Mouse with his plough,' ' On the Mountain Daisy,' 
and ' The Lament.' On my return to Edinburgh, 
I showed the volume, and mentioned what I knew 
of the author's history, to several of my friends, and 
among others, to Mr. Henry Mackenzie, who first 
recommended him to public notice in the ninety- 
seventh number of ' The Lounger.' At this time 
Burns's prospects in life were so extremely gloomy, 
that he had seriously formed a plan of going out to 
Jamaica in a very humble situation — not, however, 
without lamenting that his want of patronage should 
force him to think of a project so repugnant to his 
feelings, when his ambition aimed at no higher an 
object than the situation of an exciseman, or ganger, 
in his own country. He came to Edinburgh early 
in the winter. The attentions which he received 
during his stay in town, from all ranks and descrip- 
tions of persons, were such as would have turned 
any head but his own. I cannot say that I could 
perceive any unfavorable effect which they left on 
his mind. He retained the same simplicity of man- 
ners and appearance, which had struck me so forci- 
bly when I first saw him in the country ; nor did he 
seem to feel any additional self-importance from the 



AS A M A IS . 125 

number and rank of his acquaintance. His dress 
was perfectly suited to his situation, — plain and un- 
pretending, with sufficient attention to neatness. If 
I recollect right, he always wore boots, and when on 
more than usual ceremony, buckskin breeches. His 
manners were then, as they continued afterwards, 
simple, manly, and independent ; strongly expressive 
of conscious genius and worth, but without any 
thing that indicated forwardness, arrogance, or van- 
ity. He took his share in conversation, but not 
more than belonged to him ; and listened with appa- 
rent attention and deference, on subjects where his 
want of education deprived him of the means of in- 
formation. If there had been a little more gentle- 
ness and accommodation in his temper, he would, I 
think, have been still more interesting ; but he had 
been accustomed to give law in the circle of his or- 
dinary acquaintance, and his dread of any thing ap- 
proaching to meanness or servility, rendered his 
manner somewhat decided and hard. Nothing, per- 
haps, was more remarkable among his various at- 
tainments, than the fluency, and precision, and orig- 
inality of his language, when he spoke in company; 
more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn 
of expression, and avoided, more successfully than 
most Scotchmen, the peculiarities of Scottish phra- 
seology. 

" In the course of the spring of 1787, he called on 
me once or twice at my request, and walked with 
me to Braid Hills in the neighborhood of the town. 



126 R O B E 11 T B U 11 i\ S . 

when he charmed me stiil more by his private con- 
versation, than he had ever done in company. He 
was passionately fond of the beauties of nature ; and 
I recollect he once told me, when I was admiring a 
distant prospect in one of our morning walks, that the 
sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to 
his mind, which none could understand who had not 
witnessed, like himself, the happiness and worth 
which they contained. In his political principles he 
was a Jacobite; which was, perhaps, owing partly to 
this, that his father was originally from the estate of 
Lord Mareschall. Indeed, he did not appear to have 
thought much on such subjects, nor very consistently. 
He had a very strong sense of religion, and expressed 
deep regret at the levity with which he had heard 
it treated occasionally in some convivial meetings 
which he frequented. I speak of him as he was in 
the winter of 1786-7 ; for afterwards we met but 
seldom, and our conversation turned chiefly on his 
literary projects or his private affairs. I do not rec- 
ollect whether it appears or not from any of your 
letters to me, that you had ever seen Burns. If you 
have, it is superfluous for me to add, that the idea 
his conversation conveyed of the powers of his mind, 
exceeded, if possible, that which is suggested by his 
writings. Among the poets whom I have happened 
to know, I have been struck, in more than one in- 
stance, with the unaccountable disparity between 
their general talents and the occasional inspirations 
of their more favored moments. But all the facul- 



ASA xM A N . 127 

ties of Burns's mind were, as far as I could judge, 
equally vigorous; and his predilection for poetry 
was rather the result of his own enthusiastic and 
impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively 
adapted to that species of composition. From his 
conversation, I should have pronounced him to be 
fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had 
chosen to exert his abilities. Among the subjects 
on which he was accustomed to dwell, the charac- 
ters of the individuals with whom he happened to 
meet was plainly a favorite one. The remarks he 
made on them were always shrewd and pointed, 
though frequently inclining too much to sarcasm. 
His praise of those he loved was sometimes indis- 
criminate and extravagant ; but this, I suspect, pro- 
ceeded rather from the caprice and humor of the 
moment, than from the effects of attachment in 
blinding his judgment. His wit was ready, and 
always impressed with the marks of a vigorous un- 
derstanding, but, to my taste, not often pleasing or 
happy. 

" Noth withstanding various reports I heard dur- 
■ing the preceding winter, of Burns's predilection for 
convivial and not very select society, I should have 
concluded in favor of his habits of sobriety, from all 
of him that ever fell under my own observation. 
He told me, indeed, himself, that the weakness of 
his stomach was such as to deprive him of any merit 
m his temperance. I was, however, somewhat 
alarmed about the effect of his now comparatively 



128 ROBERT BURNS. 

sedentary and luxurious life, when he confessed to 
me, the first night he spent in my house after his 
winter's campaign in town, that he had been much 
disturbed when in bed by a palpitation at his heart, 
which, he said, was a complaint to which he had of 
late become subject, 

" In the summer of 1787, I passed some weeks in 
Ayrshh'e, and saw Burns occasionally. I think that 
he made a pretty long excursion that season to the 
Highlands, and that he also visited, what Beatty 
calls the Arcadian ground of the Teviot and the 
Tweed. In the course of the same season, I was 
led by curiosity to attend for an hour or two, a 
Mason-Lodge in Mauchline, where Burns presided. 
He had occasion to make some short unpremeditated 
compliments to different individuals, from whom he 
had no reason to expect a visit, and every thing he 
said was happily conceived, and forcibly as well as 
fluently expressed. If I am not mistaken, he told 
me that, in that village, before going to Edinburgh, 
he had belonged to a small club of such inhabitants 
as had a taste for books, when they used to converse 
and debate on any interesting questions that oc- 
curred to them in the course of their reading. His 
manner of speaking in public, had evidently the 
marks of some practice in extempore elocution. 

" I must not omit to mention, what I have always 
considered as characteristical in a his^h desfree of 
true genius, the extreme facility and good-nature 
of his taste in judging of the compositions of others, 



AS A MAN. 



129 



when there was any real ground for praise. I re- 
peated to him many passages of English poetry, with 
which he was unacquainted, and have more than 
once witnessed the tears of admiration and rapture 
with which he heard them. The collection of songs 
by Dr. Aiken, which I first put in his hands, he read 
with unmixed delight, notwithstanding his former 
efforts in that very difficult species of writuig ; and 
I have little doubt that it had some effect in polish- 
ing his subsequent compositions. 

'' In judging of prose, I do not think his taste was 
equally sound. I once read to him a passage or two 
in Franklin's works, which I thought very happily 
executed, upon the model of Addison ; but he did not 
appear to relish or perceive the beauty which they 
derived from their exquisitive simplicity, and spoke 
of them with indifference, when compared with the 
point and antithesis, and quaintness of Junius. The 
influence of this taste is very perceptible in his own 
prose compositions, although their great and various 
excellences, render some of them scarcely less objects 
of wonder than his poetical performances. The late 
Dr. Robertson used to say, that, considering his ed- 
ucation, the former seemed to him the more extra- 
orhmary of the two. 

'His memory was uncommonly retentive, at 
least for poetry, of which he recited to me frequently, 
long compositions with the most minute accuracy. 
They were chiefly ballads, and other pieces in our 
Scottish dialect; great part of them (h? told me) 



130 robp:rt luiRiss. 

he had learned m his childhood, from his mother, 
who delighted in such recitations, and whose poeti- 
cal taste, rude as it probably was, gave, it is pre- 
smnable, the first direction to her son's genius. 

" The last time I saw him, was during the winter 
of 1789-90, when he passed an evening with me at 
Drumseugh, in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, 
where I was then living. My friend, Mr. Allison, 
was the only other person in company. I never saw 
him more agreeable nor more interesting." 

What stronger evidence could there be of the ex- 
traordinary mental endowments of Robert Burns, 
than is furnished in this account, given by so cele- 
brated a man as Dugald Stewart ? Like every one 
else, Stewart was amazed and charmed by Burns's 
conversation, even more than by his poetry ; and was 
convinced that he was " fitted to excel in whatever 
walk of ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities." 
Professor Walker says the same : — " In conversation, 
Burns was powerful ; his conceptions and expressions 
were of corresponding vigor, and on all subjects were 
as remote as possible from common-place." And 
Heron says : — " The conversation of Burns was, in 
comparison with the formal and exterior circum- 
stances of his education, perhaps even more wonderful 
than his poetry. He affected no soft airs, or grace- 
ful motions of politeness, which might have ill ac- 
corded with the rustic plainness of his native man- 
ners. Conscious superiority of mind taught him to 
associate with the great, the learned, and the gay. 



AS A MAN. 131 

without being over-awed into any such bashfulness 
as might have made him confused in thought, or 
hesitating in elocution. In conversation, he dis- 
played a sort of intuitive quickness and rectitude 
of judgment upon every subject that arose ; the 
sensibility of his heart, and the vivacity of his fancy, 
gave a rich coloring to whatever reasoning he was 
disposed to advance, and his language in conversation 
was not at all less happy than his writings ; for 
these reasons, he did not fail to please immediately 
after having being first seen. I remember the late Dr. 
Robertson once observed to me, that he had scarcely 
ever met with any man, whose conversation discov- 
ered greater vigor and activity of mind than that of 
Burns." With such powers of conversation, it may 
well be supposed, that Burns attracted great atten- 
tion in the polite circles of Edinburgh. " The atten- 
tions (says Dugald Stewart) which he received 
during his stay in town, from all ranks and descrip- 
tions of persons, were such as would have turned 
any head but his own. I cannot say that I could 
perceive any unfavorable effect which they left on 
his mind." What a tribute is this to the manliness 
of his character I 

Walter Scott, when about fifteen years of age, 
saw Burns while he was in Edinburgh. Let us 
hear what impressions he made upon this great 
genius ! "As for Burns, I may truly say, Virgilmm 
vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen, in 1786-7, 
when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and 



132 ROBERT BURNS. 

feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, 
and would have given the world to know him ; but 
I had very little acquaintance with any literary peo- 
ple, and still less with the gentry of the West coun- 
try, the two sets whom he most frequented. Mr. 
Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my 
father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him 
to his lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity to 
keep his word ; otherwise I might have seen more 
of this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one 
day at the late Professor Fergusson's, where there 
were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among 
whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stew- 
art. Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked and 
listened. The only thing I remember, which was 
remarkable in Burns's manner, was the effect pro- 
duced upon him by a print of Banbury's, represent- 
ing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting 
in misery on one side, — on the other, his widow, with 
a child in her arms. These lines were written be- 
neath : — 

' Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain, — 
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptized in tears.' 

Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather, 
the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actu- 
allv shed tears. He asked whose the lines were ; and 



AS A MAN. 133 

it chanced that nobody but myself remembered, that 
they occur in the half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's 
called by the unpromising title of " The Justice of 
Peace." I whispered my information to a friend 
present, who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded 
me with a look and a word, which, though of mere 
civility, I then received, and still recollect with great 
pleasure. 

'^ His person was strong and robust ; his manner 
rustic, not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness 
and simplicity, which received part of its effect, per- 
haps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary tal- 
ents. There was a strong expression of sense and 
shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone^ I 
think, indicated the poetical character and tempera- 
ment. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed 
(I say literally gloived) when he spoke with feel- 
ing or interest. I never saw such another eye in a 
human head, though I have seen the most distin- 
guished men of my time. His conversation expressed 
perfect self-confidence, without the slightest pre- 
sumption. Among the men who were the most 
learned of the time and country, he expressed him- 
self with perfect firmness, but without the least in- 
trusive forwardness ; and when he differed in opinion, 
he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the 
same time, with modesty. I do not remember any 
part of his conversation distinctly enough to be quot- 
ed ; nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, 
where he did not recognize me, as I could not expect 



134 ROBERT BURNS. 

he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh, 
but (considering what literary emoluments have been 
since his day) the efforts made for his relief were ex- 
tremely trifling. 

" I remember, on this occasion, I thought Burns's 
acquaintance with English poetry was rather limit- 
ed, and also, that having twenty times the abilities 
of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson, he talked of them 
with too much humility as his models : there was, 
doubtless, national predilection in his estimate. 

'' This is all I can tell you of Burns. I have only 
to add, that his dress corresponded with his manners. 
He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with 
the laird. I do not speak in malam partem^ when I 
say, I never saw a man in company with his superi- 
ors in station and information, more perfectly free 
from the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. 
I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to 
females was extremely defferential, and always with 
a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which en- 
gaged their attention particularly. I have heard the 
late Duchess of Gordon remark this. I do not know 
any thing I can add to these recollections of forty 
years since." 

This narrative of Scott, is certainly calcalated to 
give us a high estimate of the abilities of Burns. In- 
deed, it is impossible for any one to resist the convic- 
tion, that Burns was one of the most intellectual of 
the human race — a man of the highest order of mind, 
and of the most robust energy of character. But 



AS A MAN 



135 



the last sentence in this narrative presents to us the 
most prominent trait in the character of Burns, and 
opens the way, to the most interesting view of him, 
in the society of Edinburgh. From his earliest 
youth. Burns was remarkable for his susceptibility 
to the charms of female society. And as he grew 
older, and his mind expanded, this susceptibility in- 
creased in depth, in scope, and in delicacy. In his 
own account of himself, which I have used so freely, 
it is seen that nearly all the pleasure of his life was 
derived from the society of the gentler sex. But in 
that narrative, which was evidently written in rather 
a facetious mood, he has left out the most striking 
passage of his whole life, that which made the deep- 
est impression on his heart. And this has always 
given me a more impressive idea of the intensity of 
his feelings upon this subject, than even the immor- 
tal odes in which he has celebrated the hallowed 
memory. He feared in that narrative to raise the 
veil from the sweet memories of Mary Campbell. He 
felt that he could not trust himself to give a narra- 
tive of his life, if he dared to touch that hallowed 
theme. It was only when his heart was touched 
to its inmost sanctuary of feeling, and in the silence 
of solitude, that he ventured on that recollection. In 
his memoranda. Burns makes this record : " After a 
pretty long trial of the most ardent, reciprocal affec- 
tion, we met, by appointment, on the second Sunday 
of May, in a sequestered spot on the banks of the 
Ayr, where we spent a day in taking a farewell, be- 



136 ROBERT BURNS. 

fore she should embark for the West Highlands, to 
arrange matters among her friends for our projected 
change of life. At the close of the autumn follow- 
ing, she crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock, 
where she had scarce landed, when she was seized 
with a malignant fever, which hurried my dear girl 
to her grave in a few days, before I could even learn 
of her illness." Cromek says that " this adieu was 
performed in a striking and moving way : the lovers 
stood on each side of a small brook, they laved their 
hands in the stream, and holding a Bible between 
them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each 
other. They parted never to meet again." 

The Bible, on which they made their vows, was 
lately in the possession of a sister of Mary Campbell. 
On the first volume, is written by the hand of Burns, 
^' And ye shall not swear by my name falsely : I am 
the Lord. Leviticus, chap. xix. 5, 12." On the 
second volume, there is written in the same hand, 
" Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform 
unto the Lord thine oaths. St. Matthew, chap. v. 
33." And on the blank leaves of both volumes, is 
impressed his mark as a mason, and also signed be- 
low, " Robert Burns, Mosgeil." Mary Campbell 
was a peasant's daughter, and at the time she capti- 
vated the heart of Burns, lived in the humble situa- 
tion of dairy-maid in the Castle of Montgomery. 
She is said to have been very beautiful, and of the 
sweetest character. With a peculiar susceptibility 
to the charms of woman, heightened and hallowed 



AS A MAN. 137 

by the tender memory of this touching incident in 
his life, much interest attaches to the manner, in 
which Burns deported himself, towards the ladies of 
the refined society of Edinburgh. 

The Duchess of Gordon, very beautiful, very 
witty, and accomplished in all those graces which 
cultivated society lends to the natural elegancies of 
a highbred woman, was at this time at the head of 
fashion in Edinburgh. Having a taste for poetry, 
she was so far charmed by the muse of Burns, 
that she not only patronized his publication in the 
most liberal manner, but she sought his acquaint- 
ance, and invited him to her social entertainments. 
So captivated was she by his conversation, that she 
declared he was the only man she ever ' saw, whose 
conversation carried her off her feet. Burns was 
also invited to the splendid entertainments of Lord 
Monboddo. That accomplished, but eccentric no- 
bleman, gave splendid suppers after the fashion of 
the ancients. His tables were filled Avith the 
choicest wines, served in decanters of a Grecian 
pattern, wreathed with flowers. Paintings by the 
ancient masters adorned his halls ; while music, 
and odors of various perfume, diffused from visible 
and invisible sources, lent their mingled charms to 
the classic scene of social life. What a spectacle it 
must have been, to see, in a brilliant scene of aris- 
tocratic grandeur like this, Robert Bvirns, just from 
the plough, surrounded by a throng of jewelled duch- 
esses, attracted around him by the sorcery of his 



138 ROBERT BURNS. 

conversation, flushed in their cheeks, and brighten- 
ing in their eyes, as the spell grew stronger and 
more fascinating ; first, their pulses quickened by 
a touch of humor, then their hearts laid under the 
subduing thrall of pathos ; and he, the magician, 
with a heart, formed at once of the lyre of Anac- 
reon, and the harp of David, at his will and with 
infinite bliss to himself, uttering first the gay senti- 
ments of the lyre, and then the sad tones of the 
harp, in alternate spells ; now gladdening all into 
glee, now melting all into sorrow, until they are 
rapt and lost in the delicious reverie. Never did any 
man possess such mastery in combining humor with 
pathos — blending smiles with tears. This power 
Burns exerted in conversation, with all the heighten- 
ing of effect, which only the sudden coruscations 
of spoken words can impart. These conversations 
could never be remembered. No human memory 
could retain any thing so ethereal. It would be like 
daguerreotyping music, or the zeph}Ts of spring, or 
the odors of flowers, or the moonlight sleeping in the 
stream. All that could be remembered, was the 
bliss of the moment, when the flame was lighted 
on the altars of the hearts of his charmed auditors. 
Thus did the all-conquering eloquence of Burns 
lay a spell on the hearts of the highbred ladies of 
Edinburgh. 

But it was not among mere scholars, and in the 
brilliant drawing-rooms of ladies alone, that Burns 
\nsited. He was invited into every circle. The 



M A \ 



139 



conventional rules of .social cxclusiveness gave way 
before his genius. The lawyers, who wen? the most 
haughty and exclusive class in swiety, had him at 
their tables. "The lawyers of Edinburgh, (says 
Lockhart,) in whose wider circle Burns figured at 
liis outset, with at least as much success as among 
the professional literati, were a very different race 
of men from these ; they would neither, I take it, 
have pardoned rudeness, nor been alarmed at wit. 
But being in those days, with scarcely an exception, 
members of the landed aristocracy of the country, 
and forming, by far, the most influential body (as 
indeed they still do) in the society of Scotland, they 
were, perhaps, as proud a set of men as ever enjoyed 
the tranquil pleasures of unquestioned superiority. 
What their haughtiness, as a body was, may be 
guessed, when we know that inferior birth was 
reckoned a fair and legitimate ground for exclud- 
ing any man from the bar. In one remarkable in- 
stance, about this very time, a man of very extraor- 
dinary talents and accomplishments, was chiefly 
opposed in a long and painful struggle for admission, 
and in reality for no reasons but those I have been 
alluding to, by gentlemen, w^ho, in the sequel, stood 
at the very head of the Whig party in Edinburgh ; 
and the same arlstocratical prejudice has, within 
the memory of the present generation, kept more 
persons of eminent qualifications in the background, 
for a season, than any English reader would easily 
believe. To this bodv belonged nineteen out of 



140 ROBERT BURNS. 

twenty of those ' patricians' whose stateliness Burns 
so long remembered, and so bitterly resented. It 
might, perha])s, have been well for him had stateli- 
ness been the worst fault of their manners. Wine- 
bibbing appears to be in most regions a favorite in- 
dulgence with those whose brains and lungs are 
subject to severe exercises of legal study and forensic 
practice. To this day, more traces of these old hab- 
its linger about the inns of courts, than in any 
other sections of Ijondon. In Dublin and Edin- 
burgh, the barristers are even now eminently con- 
vivial bodies of men ; but among the Scotch lawyers 
of the line of barons, the principle of jollity was 
indeed in its high and palmy state. He partook 
largely in those tavern scenes of audacious hila- 
rity, which then soothed, as a matter of course, the 
arid labors of the northern noblesse de la robe^ (so 
they are well called in Red Gauntlet,) and of 
which we are favored with a specimen in the ' High 
Jenks' chapter of Guy Mannering. 

" The tavern-life is now-a-days nearly extinct, 
everywhere ; but it was then in full vigor in Edin- 
burgh, and there can be no doubt that Burns rapidly 
familiarized himself with it during his residence. 
He had, after all, tasted but rarely of such excesses 
while in Ayrshire." 

We have now seen the manner in which Burns 
was received in Edinburgh. It may indeed be well 
called a triumphal reception. A monarch visiting 
his distant dominions, would hardly have more real 



Wl 



attention paid him. It is without parallel. Let us 
see how it all affected his own mind. We have 
seen what Dugald Stewart has said. And Burns s 
own letters to his friends mitten during this time, 
show clearly that he did not feel unduly elated by 
all this extraordinary attention. A few days after 
he arrived in the city, he thus writes to one of his 
neighbors, a good and wise man, for whom he had 
a great regard, John BaUantine, Esquire. " I would 
not write to you till I could have it in my power to 
c^ive you some account of myself and my matters, 
tvhich, by the bye, is often no easy task. I arrived 
here on Tuesday was se'nnight, and have suffered 
ever since I came to town with a miserable head- 
ache, and stomach complaint, but am now a good 
deal better. I have found a worthy warm friend in 
Mr Dalrymple, of Orangefield, who introduced me to 
Lord Glencairn, a man whose worth and brotherly 
kindness to me I shaU remember when time shall be 
no more. By his interest it passed in the ' Caledo- 
uian Hunt' and is entered in the books, that they 
are to take each a copy of the second edition, for 
which they are to pay one guinea. I have been 
introduced to a good many of the mblesse, but my 
avowed patrons and patronesses are the Duchess of 
Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord 
and Lady Betty Cunningham— the Dean of Fac- 
ulty-Sir John Whiteford. I have hkewise warm 
friends among the literati; Professors Stewart, 
Blair, and Mackenzie, the Man of Feeluig. I am 



142 ROBERT RURNS. 

nearly agreed with Creech to print my book, and I 
suppose I will begin on Monday. I will send a sub- 
scription bill or two West post, when I intend writ- 
ing my first kind patron, Mr. Aiken. I saw his son 
to-day, and he is very well. 

'' Dugald Stewart, and some of my learned friends, 
put me in the periodical paper called ' The Lounger,' 
a copy of which I here inclose you. I was, sir, when 
I was first honored with your notice, too obscure ; 
now I tremble lest I should be ruined by being drag- 
ged too suddenly into the glare of polite and learned 
observation." 

Could a more simple, unpretending, sensible, and 
manly letter have been written ; or one betokening 
more good feeling for his old friends, under the ex- 
traordinary circumstances in the midst of which a 
young man had been so suddenly placed? Burns 
was only twenty-seven years old when all these at- 
tentions were paid him ; and yet with what compo- 
sure and propriety does he receive them all. The 
glorification that he was undergoing had spread by 
report all over Scotland ; and his most intelligent 
friends felt assured that he would be put beside him- 
self. His friend, Mrs. Dunlop, a descendant of Sir 
William Wallace, a woman of talents, education, and 
piety, felt so much concerned for him, that she wi*ote 
to him upon his danger. Burns replied : '' You are 
afraid I shall grow intoxicated with my prosperity as 
a poet ; alas ! madam, I know myself and the world 
too well. I do not mean any airs of affected mod- 



AS A MA^. 143 

esty ; I am willing to believe that my abilities de- 
serve some notice ; but in a most enlightened, in- 
formed age and nation, v^^hen poetry is and has been 
the study of men of the first natural genius, aided 
with all the powers of polite. learning, polite books, 
and polite company, — to be dragged forth to the full 
glare of learned and polite observation, with all my 
imperfections of awkward rusticity, and crude, un- 
polished ideas on my head, I assure you, madam, I 
do not dissemble, when I tell you that I tremble for 
the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my ob- 
scure situation, without any of those advantages 
which are reckoned necessary for that character, at 
least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of 
public notice, which has borne me to a height, where 
I am absolutely, feelingly certain, my abilities are 
inadequate to support me; and too surely do I see 
that time when the same tide will leave me, and re- 
cede, perhaps, as far below the mark of truth. I do 
not say this in ridiculous affectation of self-abasement 
and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what 
ground I occupy ; and hov/ever a friend or the world 
may differ from me in that particular, I stand on my 
o^vn opinion, in silent resolve, with all the tenacious- 
ness of property. I mention this to you once for all, 
to disburthen my mind, and I do not wish to hear or 
say more about it. But, 

' When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes/ 
you will bear me witness, that when my bubble of 



144 ROBERT B U R iN S . 

fame was at the highest, I stood unhitoxicated, with 
the inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward with 
rueful resolve to the hastening time, when the blow 
of calumny should dash it to the ground, with all the 
eagerness of vengeful t/iumph." 

As grave, calm, and utilitarian a philosopher as 
Dr. Franklin ; if he had been witness of the scenes 
through which Burns passed, could not have more 
exactly appreciated, at their proper value, all the at- 
tentions extended to him, than Burns did himself, or 
could have calculated more wisely the probabilities 
as to his ultimate situation in life, as is shown by 
this letter and many others written at the same time. 
In all his correspondence during this time, there is 
not a single expression of vainglory, or even of ex- 
aggeration, as to his fortunes, either present or pros- 
pective. The most singular calmness and propriety 
pervade all he wrote, as well as all he did in the 
presence of his admirers. 

But it must not be supposed that the fires of am- 
bition had been quenched, or even mitigated, in the 
bosom of Burns, by any thing he saw in the walks of 
learned life. They burnt even more fiercely, than 
before he measured himself by the side of men of 
learning. In a letter written at this time to the Earl 
of Eglington, he says : " Fate had cast my station in 
the veriest shades of life ; but never did a heart pant 
more ardently than mine to be distinguished, though, 
till very lately, I looked in vain on every side for a 
ray of light." And yet with all this ambition, and 



AS A MAN. 145 

Standing on the proud elevation to which he had been 
so suddenly raii^ed, he had the wisdom to see clearly 
the province in which he was constrained, by his lot 
in life, to exert his abilities. " The hope," says he, 
"to be admired for ages is, in by far the greater part 
of those even who are authors of repute, an unsub- 
stantial dream. For my part, my first ambition was, 
and still my strongest wish is, to please my compeers, 
the rustic inmates of the hamlet, while ever-changing 
lansfuaa^e and manners shall allow me to be relished 
and understood. I am very willing to admit that I 
have some poetical abilities ; and as few, if any 
writers, either moral or poetical, are intimately ac- 
quainted with the classes of mankind among whom 
Ihave chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and 
manners in a different phasis from what is common, 
which may assist originality of thought." There can 
be no doubt, that this full appreciation of the neces- 
sity which hemmed in his talents, and confined his 
genius to poetry, was the condition on which his 
fame depended. If he had striven to exert his abili- 
ties in some other walk of ambition, I cannot see how 
he could have succeeded so well, under his dire pecu- 
niary necessities. The muses could be his compan- 
ions in the midst of his most drudging avocations. 
There are few such instructive examples, as the de- 
termined perseverance with which Burns climbed the 
hill of fame. 

But as ambitious as was Burns, yet amidst all the 
glare of flattering attentions paid him in Edinburgh, 



146 ROBERT BURNS. 

his generosity was not absorbed in egotism. With 
that diffusive kindness, and that appreciation of the 
truly noble in human conduct, which only the noble- 
minded can realize, he petitioned the Kirk of Cannon- 
gate, to permit him to erect a monument over the 
grave of the poet Fergusson. This is his petition : 
" To the honorable Baillies of Cannongate, Edinburgh. 
Gentlemen : I am sorry to be told that the remains 
of Robert Fergusson, the justly celebrated poet, a 
man whose talents for ages to come will do honor 
to our Caledonian name, lie in your church-yard, 
among the ignoble dead, unnoticed and unknown. 

" Some memorial to direct the steps of the lovers 
of Scottish song, when they wish to shed 'a tear over 
the ' narrow house' of the bard wdio is no more, is 
surely a tribute due to Fergusson's memory : a trib- 
ute I wish to have the honor of paying. 

" I petition you then, gentlemen, to permit me to 
lay a simple stone over his revered ashes, to remain 
an inalienable property to his deathless fame." The 
petition was granted ; and the stone was laid with 
tliis inscription upon it, by Burns : — 

" No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay, 
No storied urn, nor animated bust ; 
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way, 
To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust." 

Burns was now meditating a return to his home. 
He had been in Edinburgh more than five months. 
His poems had just issued from the press, and were 



A S A M A .\ . 1 17 

circulated by the booksellers all over Great Britain, 
and even to the American Colonies. And every- 
where they meet a hearty welcome. In England 
they were nearly as much praised as in Scotland. 
On the 22nd of March, 1787, Burns had written to 
his friend, Mrs. Dunlop : — '' Scottish scenes and 
Scottish story are the themes I could wish to sing. 
I have no dearer aim than to have it in my power, 
unplagued with the routine of business, for which 
heaven knows I am unfit enough, to make leisurely 
pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit on the fields 
of her battles ; to wander on the romantic banks of 
her rivers ; and to muse by the stately towers or 
venerable ruins, once the honored abodes of her 
heroes. 

" But these are Utopian thoughts : I have dallied 
long enough with life ; 'tis time to be in earnest. I 
have a fond, an aged mother to care for : and some 
other bosom ties perhaps equally tender. When the 
individual only suffers by the consequences of his 
own thoughtlessness, indolence or folly, he may not 
be censurable ; nay, shining abilities, and some of 
the nobler virtues, may half sanctify a heedless 
character : but where God and nature have intrusted 
the welfare of others to his care ; where the trust is 
sacred, and the ties are dear, that man must be far 
gone in selfishness, or strangely lost to reflection, 
whom these connections will not rouse to exertion." 

With these noble sentiments and generous filial 
resolves, did Burns contemplate leaving Edinburgh. 



148 ROBERT BURNS. 

And now that the time arrived when he could return 
home, he determined to make first one of those pil- 
grimages through Caledonia, which he so much de- 
sired. Having made an arrangement to be accom- 
panied by Robert Ainslie, a young gentleman of 
talents and education, he resolved to make a border 
tour. So, on the 3rd of May, 1787, he addressed 
this note to Professor Blair : — "I leave Edinburgh to- 
morrow morning, but could not go without troubling 
you with half a line, sincerely to thank you for the 
kindness, patronage, and friendship you have shown 
me. I often felt the embarrassment of my singular 
situation ; drawn forth from the veriest shades of 
life to the glare of remark ; and honored by the 
notice of those illustrious names of my country, 
whose works, while they are applauded to the end 
of time, will ever instruct and mend the heart. 
However the meteor-like novelty of my appearance 
in the world might attract notice, and honor me 
with the acquaintance of the permanent lights of 
genius and literature, those who are truly benefac- 
tors of the immortal nature of man, I knew very 
well that my utmost merit was far unequal to the 
task of preserving that character when once the 
novelty was over ; I have made up my mind that 
abuse, or almost even neglect, will not surprise 
me in my quarters." The next morning Dr. Blair 
answered the letter : — " I was favored this forenoon 
with your very obliging letter, together with an im- 
pression of your portrait, for which I return you my 



AS A MAN. 149 

best thanks. The success you have met with I do 
not think was beyond your merit ; and if I had any 
small hand in contributing to it, it gives me great 
pleasure. I know no w^ay in which literary persons 
who are advanced in years can do more service to 
the world, than in forwarding the efforts of rising 
genius, or bringing forth unknown merit from ob- 
scurity. 

" Your situation, as you say, was indeed very 
singular : and in being brought out, all at once, from 
the shades of deepest privacy to so gi*eat a share of 
public notice and observation, you had to stand a se- 
vere trial. I am happy that you have stood it so 
well ; and as far as I have known or heard, though 
in the midst of many temptations, without reproach 
to your character and behaviour. 

" As you very properly hint yourself, you are not 
to be surprised if, in your rural retreat, you do not 
find yourself surrounded with that glare of notice 
and applause which here shone upon you. No man 
can be a good poet, without being something of a 
philosopher. He must lay his account, that any one 
wdio exposes himself to public observation, will occa- 
sionally meet with the attacks of illiberal censure, 
which it is always best to overlook and despise." 

Having bid adieu to Edinburgh, Burns and Ro- 
bert Ainslie directed their course by Lammermoor. 
Burns was now again in his glory, contemplating 
the beauties and sublimities of nature. For, let 
him look where he might, whether in the sky, the 



150 R ( ' B E R T BURNS. 

earth, or the sea, it was given him to behold the 
power of the Creator working for beauty and for glory. 
And he had the master faculty to seize in the grasp 
of his intellect, all that he saw of beauty and of glory^ 
and to proclaim it to his fellow-men in the inventive 
mysteries of poetry. And he was happy, gloriously 
happy, whether he was pencilling the " Daisy" in the 
poetic hues of moral sentiment, or was pouring forth 
the wild reveries of " Tam O'Shanter," or the thun- 
der-breathing war-song of " Robert Bruce," from the 
ever-teeming abundance of his deep and various 
soul. He was one of nature's prophets, appointed 
by the Creator to dwell, and walk, and wander, and 
feast with ever increasing delight on the multitudi- 
nous beauties and glories of creation, and embodying 
them in the electric diction of poetry, to pour them 
in a tide of lire into the hearts of duller mortals, 
until they feel that melody of the heart, that rap- 
ture of the soul, which it is the prerogative of genius 
to inspire, as well as a duty imposed upon it by the 
Creator, in lifting the mass of men from earth to- 
wards heaven. Every thing in nature spoke to the 
heart of Burns, and tuned a responsive string. 
Wherever he saw beauty, he felt it, and loved it, 
and realized its heavenly nature in its joyous sweet- 
ness. With these high prerogatives was Burns now 
exploring the domains of nature, making his journey 
*' a feast of reason and a flow of soul." He kept a 
journal of his tour, and noted down both persons 
and things with a free hand. 



AS A MAN, 151 

On the 6th of May, Burns and young Ainslie ar- 
rived at Berry well, the residence of the father of the 
latter. Sunday, Burns accompanied Miss Ainslie 
to church. The preacher selected a text denounc- 
ing sinners. In the course of the sermon, Burns 
observing Miss Ainslie turning over the leaves of 
her Bible to find the text, took a slip of paper from 
his pocket, and pencilled these lines, and presented 
them to her : — 

" Fair maid, you need not take the hint, 
Nor idle texts pursue, 
'Twas guilty sinners that he meant, 
Not angels such as you." 

Next day, they pursued their journey towards the 
Tweed. '' When we arrived at Coldstream, (says 
Ainslie,) where the dividing line between Scotland 
and England is the Tweed, I suggested our going 
across to the other side of the river by the Cold- 
stream bridge, that Burns might have it to say, he 
had been in England. We did so, and were pacing 
slowly along on English ground, enjoying our walk, 
when I was astonished to see the poet throw away 
his hat, and thus uncovered, look towards Scotland, 
kneeling down with uplifted hands, and apparently 
in a state of great enthusiasm. I kept silence, un- 
certain Avhat was next to be done, when Burns, with 
extreme emotion, and an expression of countenance 
which I will never forget, prayed for, and blessed 
Scotland most solemnly, by pronouncing aloud the 



152 ROB E R T 13 U R N S . 

two concluding verses of the ' Cotter's Saturday 
Night.' " 

At Jedburgh, Burns dined with a Captain Ruth- 
erford, who had been a prisoner for many years 
among the Indians of America. In his Journal is 
the following : '^ The Captain, a polite fellow, fond 
of money in his farming way, showed a particular 
respect for my hardship — his lady a proper matrimo- 
nial second part of him. Miss Rutherford, a beauti- 
ful girl, but too much of a woman to expose so much 
of a fine swelling bosom — her face very fine." The 
last sentence shows the delicate moral sensibility of 
Burns, it being the secret thought of his heart, pri- 
vately recorded. While at Jedburgh, Burns was 
waited upon by the magistrates, and handsomely 
presented with the freedom of the town. And at 
Eyemouth, he was made a Royal Arch Mason of 
St. Abb's Lodge. Thus runs the brotherly record : 
" On account of R. Burns's remarkable poetical ge- 
nius, the Encampment unanimously agreed to ad- 
mit him gratis, and considered themselves honored 
by having a man of such shining abilities for one of 
their companions." Thus, everywhere were honors 
paid to Burns. Thus was he realizing the truth 
which he afterwards so happily expressed : — 

" The rank is but the guinea stamp, 
The man 's the gowd for a' that !" 

On the 27th of May Burns crossed the Tweed, 
and the 8th of June, after six months' absence, he 



AS A MAN. 153 

reached Mossgiel. His mother met him ^Yith the 
simple exclamation, "Oh, Robert!" But that im- 
plied every thing. Her mind had not words for her 
heart. How could a simple peasant woman express 
her feelings towards such a son? And what his 
feelings were towards his mother, may be inferred 
from the noble sentiments expressed about her, be- 
fore he left Edinburgh, while he was yet standing 
on the heights of fame, in the view of all the aris- 
tocracy of birth, of wealth, and of learning. He 
still remembered and honored his aged and humble 
mother. This became a man ; and Robert Burns 
could do nothing else. 

Burns remained at home but two weeks. He 
went oat but little. Was restless, being still with- 
out any settled aim in life. His position, too, in so- 
ciety was unpleasant. His neighbors felt reserved 
in his presence, now he had become, what they did 
not before know, a great man. His feelings are 
portrayed in a letter written at this time to Mr. Ni- 
col, master of the High School of Edinburgh. " I 
never, my friend, thought mankind very capable of 
any thing generous ; but the stateliness of the patri- 
cians in Edinburgh, and the servility of my plebeian 
brethren, (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance,) 
since I returned home, have nearly put mc out of 
conceit altogether of my species. I have bought a 
pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about me, 
in order to study the sentiments, the dauntless mag- 
nanimity, the intrepid, unyielding independence, the 



154 ROBERT H U R X S . 

desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in 
that great personage, Satan." Burns plainly saw, 
that his fortune was to be a hard one. That he 
was in a great measure, cut off from the sympathies 
of both the higher and Jower classes of society. So 
his brave soul was hardening itself for the conflict. 
He was not a man to quail before difficulties. It 
must not, however, be supposed, that he was like 
Satan, preparing to war against the right. He ex- 
plains his meaning in a letter written several months 
afterwards : — " My favorite feature in Milton's Sa- 
tan is his manly fortitude, in supporting what can- 
not be remedied. I meant no more, by saying he 
was a favorite hero of mine." Burns was therefore 
merely strengthening his fortitude, by studying the 
character of Satan. But how perilous is the situa- 
tion of a man who has to resort to such aids to sus- 
tain his sinking heart. It is through these private 
utterances that we can see into the griefs of the hu- 
man spirit. And what a commentary is this upon 
the fleeting influence for happiness of human adula- 
tion ! The very poles of the social world seemed 
just now to be throwing up auroras of glory for his 
fame. Not a cloud of the future, but what seemed 
gilded with a bow of promise to animate his hopes. 
And now, such heavy darkness benights him, that 
he feels abandoned of his fellow-men, and like one 
without hope, he even catches a sympathy to sustain 
him from the great exile to perdition. 

But Burns was not the man to remain in a wrnnor 



AS A M A N . 155 

position long. His elastic spirit bounded above the 
difficulties of the present, and cast its anticipations 
upon the hopeful promises of the future. He deter- 
mined to travel over the Highlands, in order to catch 
inspiration, both from the natural scenery, and from 
the historic associations of particular places, and 
pour forth the awakened thoughts in song. During 
the summer of 1787, he made three different tours, 
one of them as far as six hundred miles on horse- 
back. On the battle field of Bannockburn, he made 
this memorandum in his journal : '' The field of 
Bannockburn — the hole where glorious Bruce set his 
standard. Here no Scot can pass uninterested. 
I fancy to myself, that I see my gallant, heroic 
countrymen coming over the hills, and down upon 
the plunderers of their country, the murderers of 
their fathers ; noble revenge and just hate glowing 
in every vein, striving more and more eagerly as 
they approach the oppressive, insulting, blood-thirst- 
ing foe I I see them meet in glorious, triumphant 
congTatulation on the victorious field, exulting in 
their heroic, royal leader, and rescued liberty and 
independence I" We see in this, the poet's heart 
teeming in too great abundance for utterance. All 
the floodgates of his feelings are lifted, and the ming- 
ling tides are rolling together in conscious confusion. 
But the inspiration caught upon the field of the con- 
flict, was afterwards poured forth in a voice of thun- 
der, in that grand war-ode — the noblest war-song 
known to the world — the most perfect utterance of 



156 ROBERT BURNS. 

a nation's heart in the hour of a gi-eat battle with a 
powerful invading foe, that has ever been spoken to 
the ear of universal man. 

Burns visited the seat of the Duke of Athole ; 
and while there, strolled on the banks of Bruar 
Water. The stream, though presenting imposing 
scenery, was destitute of trees. When Burns re- 
turned home, he wrote "The Humble Petition of 
Bruar Water" to the Duke, begging him to plant 
its banks with trees. The Duke complied with the 
request ; and now a beautiful forest shades its 
banks, realizing the foreshadowed promises of the 
poem : — 

" Would then my noblest master please 

To grant my highest wishes, 
He'll shade my banks wi' tow'rlng trees, 

And bonnie spreading bushes ; 
Delighted doubly then, my lord, 

You'll wander on my banks. 
And listen mony a grateful bird 

Return you tuneful thanks. 

The sober lav'rock, warbling wild, 

Shall to the skies aspire ; 
The gowdspink, Music's gayest child, 

Shall sweetly join the choir ; 
The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear. 

The mavis mild and mellow ; 
The robin, pensive autumn cheer, 

In all her locks of yellow." 

Thus did Burns find material for poetry in every 



AS A MAN. 157 

thing. Bruar Water, is made a classic stream 
forever. 

On the 16th September, 1787, Burns arrived at 
Edinburgh; and, on the next day, wrote to his 
brother Gilbert:—''! arrived here safe yesterday 
evening after a tour of twenty-two days, and travel- 
ling near six hundred miles, windings included. 
My farthest stretch, was about ten miles beyond 
Inverness. 1 went through the heart of the High- 
lands by Crieff, Taymouth, the famous seat of Lord 
Breadalbane, down the Tay, among cascades and 
Druidical circles of stones, to Dunkeld, a seat of the 
Duke of Athole ; thence across Tay, and up one 
of his tributary streams, to Blair of Athole, another 
of the Duke's seats, where I had the honor of spend- 
ing nearly two days with his grace and family ; 
thence many miles through a wild country, among 
cliffs gray with eternal snows and gloomy savage 
glens, till I crossed Spay, and went down the stream 
through Strathspey, so famous in Scottish music ; 
Badenoch, &c., till I reached Grant Castle, where 
I spent half a day with Sir James Grant and fam- 
ily ; and then crossed the country to Fort George, 
but called by the way at Cawdor, the ancient seat 
of Macbeth ; there I saw the identical bed in which 
tradition says Duncan was murdered : lastly, from 
Fort George to Inverness. 

'' I returned by the coast, through Nain, Forres, 
and so on, to Aberdeen, thence to Stonehive, where 
James Burness from Montrose, met me by appoint- 



158 ROBERT BURNS. 

merit. I spent two days among our relations, and 
found our aunts, Jean and Isabel, still alive, and hale 
old women. John Cairn, though born the same 
year with our father, walks as vigorously as I can,, 
— they have had several letters from his son in New 
York. The rest of my stages are not worth re- 
hearsing : warm as I was from Ossian's country, 
where I had seen his grave, what cared I for fish- 
towns or fertile carses ? I slept at the famous 
Brodie of Brodie's one night, and dined at Gordon 
Castle next day, with the Duke, Duchess and fam- 
ily." 

What an excellent narrative this is, so much in a 
few words ! Burns intended to tarry at Castle Gor- 
don : but Nicol of the High School of Edinburgh, 
his travelling companion, took offence at something, 
and insisted on continuing his journey, and Burns 
would not let him go alone. This was unfortunate 
for Burns ; for the Duchess of Gordon had invited 
Henry Addington, afterwards Viscount Sidmouth, to 
meet him there, with a view, it is said, through him, 
to enlist the ministry of Pitt in his behalf Addington 
thought Burns almost a rival of Shakspeare, and had 
said so, to Pitt and Melville. Burns, some time af- 
terwards, in a letter thus facetiously alludes to the 
unlucky event : — " I shall certainly among my lega- 
cies, leave my latent curse on that unlucky predic- 
ament which hurried, — tore me away from Castle 
(xordon. May that obstinate son of Latin prose 
(Nicol) be curst to Scottish mile periods ; and 



A 9. A M A N. 159 

damned to seven-league paragraphs ; while Declen- 
sion, and Congugation, Gender, Number and Time, 
under the ragged banners of Dissonance and Disar- 
rangement, eternally rank against him in hostile ar- 
ray !" 

Burns was now for the second time in Edinburgh. 
He had come to settle with Creech, his bookseller. 
Creech had distant correspondents to consult, and 
many accounts to settle. On that account Burns 
was detained in the city until the 13th April, 1788. 
He had too, been upset in a coach, and had injured 
one of his knees so much as to confine him for a 
long time. In a letter at this time, to Miss Chal- 
mers, a beautiful young lady with w4iom, in his 
tours, he had become acquainted, he mentions his 
unsettled state of mind ; and says : — " There are 
just two creatures that I would envy, — a horse in 
his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an 
oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. 
The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the 
other has neither wish nor fear." With what power 
does this depict the state of his heart ? It is an 
illustration of unsurpassed beauty, and lays open the 
heart right naked before us. 

During this visit to Edinburgh, Burns became 
acquainted with a lady, between whom and himself 
there grew^ up a perilous attachment. One evening, 
at a Miss Nimmo's, he met with a lady whom he 
supposed to be a widow. She was born the same 
vear with himself, was beautiful, of most fascinating 



160 ROBERT BURNS. 

manners, very bewitching in conversation, and alto- 
gether very much such a woman as Burns was a 
man. She had been delighted with his poetry, was 
extremely desirous to see him ; and yet during his 
stay in Edinburgh the winter before, she never had 
an opportunity. She was, as might well be antici- 
pated, very much fascinated by Burns, and he the 
no less charmed by her. He was invited to take 
tea with her the next evening ; but his knee had be- 
come so sore that he was prevented. In his note of 
apology he expressed himself thus : — " I never met 
with a person in my life whom I more anxiously 
wdshed to meet again than yourself." The lady, in 
reply, wrote a kind note, and asked, " Do you re- 
member that she whom you address is a married 
woman ?" To this Burns said, in another note, 
" Paying addresses to a married woman ! I started, 
as if I had seen the ghost of him I had injured." 
The lady was a Mrs. McElhose, formerly a Miss 
Craig, cousin of Lord Craig, and niece of Collin 
McLaurin, the celebrated mathematician and friend 
of Newton. Her father was a physician of Glas- 
gow. Her mother had died when she was a child. 
She was to be sent by her father to boarding-school 
at Edinburgh ; and a young Mr. McElhose hearing 
when she was to go, hired all the seats in the stage 
but the one taken for her, that he might accompany 
her alone. He had no acquaintance with her, but 
had been attracted by her in the streets of Glasgow, 
and took this mode of becoming acquainted. She 



AS A MAN. 161 

was only fifteen years old, and was called the Glas- 
gow Beauty. When she returned from school, 
McElhose renewed his attentions, and being a man 
of handsome person and fascinating manners, he 
won her young heart. Her father objected to the 
intimacy. They were married when she was only 
seventeen years of age. After living together only 
four years, she determined to leave his house, on ac- 
count of his jealous and brutal disposition. She and 
her two sons found an affectionate welcome under 
her father's roof. Her father soon after died, leav- 
ing her a small estate. In order, unprotected as she 
now was, to be out of the way of her husband, she 
removed to Edinburgh, to be near Lord Craig, her 
cousin. Her husband soon removed to the West 
Indies. Mrs. McElhose, on account of her youth, 
her beauty, her genius, her sweet disposition, and 
generous character, and the tenderness which her 
misfortunes had thrown over the whole, had won for 
her the most affectionate solicitude for her welfare 
in the society of Edinburgh. She had been living 
in Edinburgh for several years. Under these cir- 
cumstances she and Burns met. Both were at- 
tracted. At first, however, it was a mere pleasing 
fancy which attracted them to each other. But as 
Burns was pleased with her note in answer to his 
apology, he replied in a sprightly style, and as he 
was confined, and likely to be so for some time, she 
rejoined. In this way a correspondence grew up be- 
tween them, in the course of which he adopted the 



162 



ROBERT B U R N H 



signature of " Sylvander," and she of " Clarinda." 
After Burns was well enough to visit, they still cor- 
responded, as it was not thought prudent for him to 
visit her very often. In this way did these tv>^o 
high souls become peculiarly interested in each 
other. In the letters of Clarinda there are some 
beautiful passages, showing her to be a woman of 
high sentiment, and deeply tried in her best affec- 
tions. When Burns was about to leave Edinburgh, 
she wrote him a letter, in which she says: '' Sylvan- 
der, I believe our friendship will be lasting ; its basis 
has been virtue, similarity of tastes, feelings, and 
sentiments. Alas ! I shudder at the idea of an hun- 
dred miles' distance. You'll hardly write once a 
month, and other objects will weaken your affection 
for Clarinda. Yet I cannot believe so. Oh, let the 
scenes of nature remind you of Clarinda I In win- 
ter, remember the dark shades of her fate ; in sum- 
mer, the warmth, the cordial warmth of her friend- 
ship ; in autumn, her glowing wishes to bestow 
plenty on all ; and let spring animate you with 
hopes that your friend may yet live to surmount the 
wintry blasts of life, and revive to taste a spring- 
time of happiness ! At all events, Sylvander, the 
storms of life will quickly pass, and ' one unbounded 
spring encircle all.' There,' Sylvander, we will 
meet. Love there is not a crime. I charge you to 
meet me there. Oh God I I must lay down my 
pen." 

Some of Burns's most beautiful songs were ad- 



AS A MAN. 163 

dressed to this lady ; and to his death he had for her 
the most affectionate friendship. She died only a 
few years ago, greatly respected ; and since her 
death, her correspondence with Burns has been pub- 
lished. This, to Burns, was one of the most pleas- 
ing episodes in his life. But then, to both it was 
also a source of much pain. 

" Dearly bought, the hidden treasure, 
Finer feelings can bestow ; 
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, 
Thrill the deepest notes of woe." 

While Burns was in Edinburgh, Johnson began 
his " Musical Museum," for the purpose of coUectino- 
all the Scottish songs set to their proper tunes, and to 
procure new songs for the tunes, where the old ones 
were vulgar or indelicate. Johnson asked the as- 
sistance of Burns, and he at once entered into the 
project with his whole heart. He wrote to his friends 
in every quarter of the country, for airs and verses 
for the Museum ; and during the winter he composed 
thirty original ones. 

Having settled with his bookseller. Burns realized, 
after deducting all his expenses in Edinburgh, about 
four hundred pounds. He now determined to settle 
himself in life. Through the instrumentality of 
friends, he procured a place with an income of thirty- 
five pounds a year, in the excise. On the 13th of 
April, 1788, he left Edinburgh, and returned home 
with the purpose of renting a farm, which, with his 



164 ROBERT BURNS. 

office, he thought would enable him to live. Thus 
ends the second stasre in the life of Burns. A new 
era now opens upon him. 

Some years after the death of Mary Campbell, 
Burns had placed his affections upon Jean Armour, 
the daughter of a respectable peasant. She seems 
to have been the woman who, next to Mary Camp- 
bell, made the deepest impression upon his heart. 
And she loved him devotedly. Mr. Armour, the fa- 
ther, had taken up an extravagant prejudice against 
Burns, and endeavored to break the attachment. 
The young couple met secretly, and had a private 
marriage, by a contract in writing. The fact of their 
marriage soon manifested itself in an unmistakable 
manner ; and the father, with a mad obstinacy, made 
his daughter destroy the marriage lines, and thereby 
degraded her from a wife to a position, which her 
subsequent life proved to be unjust, cruel, and tyran- 
nical. It is to this that Burns alludes in his auto- 
biography, when he says, " This is the unfortunate 
story that gave rise to my printed poem, ' The La- 
ment.' This was a most melancholy affair, which I 
cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly 
given me one or two of the principal qualifications 
for a place among those who have lost the chart, and 
mistaken the reckoning of rationality." Burns was 
greatly incensed at Jean Armour for yielding to the 
dictation of her father, and had determined to go to 
the West Indies, when he was called, as we have 
seen, to Edinburgh. During all the time Burns was 



AS A MAN. 



165 



in Edinburgh, he considered himself as entirely re- 
leased from all obligation to Jean Armour ; as she 
had deserted him in obedience to her father. But 
notwithstanding all this, after he had been in Edin- 
burgh two months of his first visit, he says, in a letter 
to Gavin Hamilton, " To tell the truth among friends, 
I feel a miserable blank in my heart from the want 
of her." The eclat which Burns had received, did 
not make him forget her whom he had placed in the 
most irretrievable of all situations. He therefore 
determined to open anew his intercourse with her. 
In April, 1788, they were married in the forms of 
law. Soon afterwards, he thus writes to his friend, 
Mrs. Dunlop: — "Your surmise, madam, is just; I 
am a husband. I found a once much-loved, and still 
much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to th« 
mercy of the naked elements ; but I enabled her to 
purchase a shelter :— there is no sporting with a fel- 
low-creature's happiness or misery. The most placid 
good-nature and sweetness of disposition; a warm 
heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love 
me ; vigorous health, and sprightly cheerfulness, set 
off to the best advantage by a more than commonly 
handsome figure ; these I think, in a woman, may 
make a good wife, though she should never have read 
a page but in the Scriptures, nor have danced in a 
brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding. You 
are right, that a bachelor state would have assured 
me more friends; but, from a cause you wUl easily 
guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own 



166 ROBERT BURNS. 

mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching 
my God, would seldom have been of the number." 
In this and other letters written at the same time, 
we have the expression of the noble motives which 
actuated Burns in the union of his fortunes with 
those of Jean Armour. 

Burns now rented a farm in Nithsdale, called 
Ellisland. The farm was beautifully situated on 
the river Nith, about six miles from Dumfries. The 
society in the neighborhood was fit, in point of in- 
formation and refinement, for any man in Scotland. 
Mrs. Burns did not go to Ellisland for some time ; as 
the farm was not fit for her reception. The houses 
had to be rebuilt. In the meantime, Burns dwelt in 
a hut. In his common-place book is this memoran- 
dum :— '' Ellisland, Sunday, 14th June, 1788. This 
is now the third day that I have been in this country. 
' Lord, what is man V AVhat a bustling little bun- 
dle of passions, appetites, ideas, and fancies ! And 
what a capricious kind of existence he has here ! I 
am such a coward in life, so tired of the service, that 
I could almost at any time, with Milton's Adam, 
gladly lay me in my mother's lap, and be at peace. 
But a wife and children bind me to struggle with the 
stream, till some sudden squall shall overset the silly 
vessel, or in the listless return of years, its own crazi- 
ness reduce it to a wreck. Farewell now to those 
giddy follies, those varnished vices, which, though 
half-sanctified by the bewitching levity of wit and 
humor, are at best but thriftless idling with the pre- 



AS A MAN. . 167 

cious current of existence ; nay, often poisoning the 
whole, that, like the plains of Jericho, the loater is 
naughty and the ground barren^ and nothing short 
of a supernaturally-gifted Elisha can after heal the 
evils. 

*' Wedlock, the circumstance that buckles me 
hardest to care, if virtue and religion were to be any 
thing with me but names, was what, in a few sea- 
sons I must have resolved on ; in my present situa- 
tion it was absolutely necessary. Humanity, gener- 
osity, honest pride of character, justice to my own 
happiness for after life, so far as it could depend 
(which it surely will a great deal) on internal 
peace ; all these joined their warmest suffrages, 
their most powerful solicitations, with a rooted at- 
tachment, to urge the step I have taken. Nor 
have I any reason on her part to repent. I can 
fancy how, but I have never seen where, I could 
make a better choice. Come then, let me act up 
to my favorite motto, that glorious passage in 
Young,— 

* On reason build resoh'e, 
That column of true majesty in man !' " 

With these reflections, did Burns enter upon his 
new career. From the 11th of June until the first 
week in December, Mrs. Barns was at Mauchline, 
forty-six miles distant from EUisland. Burns fre- 
quently visited her. But can any one well see how 
a man who liad been so feted at Edinburgh, could 



168 ROBE R T BURNS. 

help indulging in gloomy forebodings, situated as 
Burns now was, away from his wife, and living in a 
house which he thus describes : — '' The hovel which 
I shelter in is pervious to every blast that blows, 
and every shower that falls ; and I am only pre- 
served from being chilled to death by being suffocated 
with smoke." It cannot be questioned that Burns, 
while in Edinburgh, had hoped to occupy a higher 
walk in life, and have ampler scope for his ambition. 
It is wonderful then, with what manfulness he 
united his fortunes with the woman who had put 
her destiny into his hands, while he was humble 
like herself, and deliberately and perseveringly ac- 
commodated liimself to a walk in life in which she 
could with propriety be his wife. And amidst it 
all he never for a moment loses the sense of his 
own greatness as a man, but ever keeps in view his 
high vocation as a poet. About this time he talked 
of visiting Mrs. Dunlop, but she said she feared it 
would interfere with his business. To this he re- 
plied that it would not. — '' But be that as it may, 
the heart of the man and the fancy of the poet, are 
the two grand considerations for which I live : if 
miry ridges, and dirty dunghills, are to engross the 
best part of the functions of my soul immortal, I 
had better been a rook or a magpie at once, and 
then I should not have been plagued with any ideas 
superior to breaking of clods, and picking up grubs ; 
not to mention barn-door cocks or mallards, crea- 
tures with which I could almost exchange lives 



AS A MAN. 169 

at any time." And a few months after this, he 
writes to Bishop Giddes : — " I am, if possible, more 
than ever an enthusiast to the muses. I am deter- 
mined to study man and nature, and in that view 
incessantly ; and try if the ripening and corrections 
of years can enable me to produce something worth 
preserving — some large poetic plans that are floating 
in my imagination, or partly put in execution, I 
shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of 
meeting with you." Such were the sentiments and 
high purposes of Burns, though cultivating an un- 
productive farm, at a high rent, and riding two hun- 
dred miles a week, gauging barrels, and searching 
out smugglers. And during all the time he lived on 
this farm, he continued to write for Johnson's Musi- 
cal Museum, his incomparable songs. He wrote at 
this time his " Mary in Heaven," and that greatest 
of all his productions, as he himself thought, '' Tam 
O'Shanter." It is hardly to be believed, that he 
could produce so many songs ; for they are a pe- 
culiarly difficult species of composition. "The 
mob of mankind, that many-headed monster, (says 
Burns,) would laugh at so serious a speech, about 
an old song : but as Job says, ' O that mine adver- 
sary had written a book !' Those who think that 
composing a Scotch song is a trifling business, let 
them try !" Most of the songs produced at this 
time were composed as Burns rode over the hills and 
vales on his excise excursions. " Nor do I find 
(says he) my hurried life greatly inimical to my 



170 ROBERT BURNS. 

correspondence with the muses. Their visits to me, 
indeed, and I believe to most of their acquaintances, 
like the visits of good angels, are short and far be- 
tween ; but I meet them now and then, as I jog 
through the hills of Nithsdale, just as I used to do, 
on the bank of Ayr." 

The chief aim of Burns now, as it had ever been, 
was to cultivate his own mind, and to elevate that 
of his fellow-men. While living near Tarbolton and 
Mauchline, he established reading and debating clubs 
in both places, and was president of both of them. 
And now, while at Ellisland, he established a paro- 
chial library ; of which he was treasurer, librarian 
and censor. He made the selection of all the books, 
and his letters to the booksellers show the excellence 
of his choice. Such libraries are now common in the 
rural districts of southern Scotland : but Burns was 
amongst the first, if not the first, to establish them. 
What a service has he rendered to his country by 
these various efforts to diffuse knowledge among his 
fellow-men. It must not be supposed, that it is only 
through his poetry, that he has produced an impres- 
sion on his country. 

Burns still continued his intercourse with the lit- 
erati of Edinburgh. He made one visit to that city 
in the winter of 1789-90; and as we have seen, 
Dugald Stewart says, he '' never saw him more 
agreeable nor more interesting," than he was the 
evening he spent with him in company with Alison 
the author of the celebrated Essay on Taste. After 



AS A MAN. 171 

Burns returned home, Alison sent him a copy of his 
work, and requested his opinion of it. There is not, 
in the most transcendental walks of metaphysics, a 
more subtle problem, than that of the theory of taste. 
Nor has any one much oftener engaged the attention 
of philosophers. And it baffled all from Plato to Ali- 
son. But Alison has thrown more light upon the 
subject than all others put together. His work in 
every respect is a master-piece of philosophical spec- 
ulation. It in my judgment holds the same place in 
aesthetics, that Locke's Essay on Human Under- 
standing does in mental philosophy. Let us see then, 
how Burns disposes of such a work ! In a letter dat- 
ed Elhsland, 14th February, 1791, he says : — " You 
must by this time have set me down as one of the 
most ungrateful of men. You did me the honor to 
present me with a book, which does honor to science 
and the intellectual powers of men, and I have not 
even so much as acknowdedged the receipt of it. The 
fact is, you yourself are to blame for it. Flattered 
as I was by your telling me that you wished my opin- 
ion of the work, the old spiritual enemy of man- 
kind, who knows well that vanity is one of the sins 
that most easily beset me, put it into my head to 
ponder over the performance with the look-out of a 
critic, and to draw up, forsooth, a deep, learned di- 
gest of strictures on a composition, of which in fact, 
until I read your book, I did not even know the first 
principles. I own, sir, that at first glance, several 
of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That 



172 ROBERT B U R x\ S . 

the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it 
vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime, than the 
twingle-twangle of a Jews' harp ; that the delicate 
flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is 
heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more 
beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a bur- 
dock ; and that from something innate and independ- 
ent of all associations of ideas ; these I had set down 
as irrefragable, orthodox truths, until reading your 
book shook my faith. In short, sir, except Euclid's 
elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to un- 
ravel by my father's fireside, in the winter evenings 
of the first season I held the plough, I never read a 
book which gave me such a quantum of information, 
and added so much to my stock of ideas, as your 
' Essays on the Principles of Taste.' One thing, 
sir, you must forgive my mentioning as an uncom- 
mon merit in the work, I mean the language. To 
clothe abstract philosophy in elegance of style, sounds 
something like a contradiction in terms ; but you 
have convinced me that they are quite compatible." 
Of all the criticisms that liave been written upon the 
work of Alison, from Lord Jeffrey's celebrated arti- 
cle in the Edinburgh Review, down, nothing in so 
small a space, near as good, has appeared, as this let- 
ter of Burns. Not Dugald Stewart himself, though 
he has written upon the theory of taste, could have 
written a more appropriate letter in all particulars. 
The subject is approached with the ease and confi- 
dence of one trained in such si>eculations. Burns 



ASA M A .\ . 173 

deals witli the whole subject with a facetious cour- 
tesy ; and with one illustration, brings out the 
whole pith and point of the theory, with a subli- 
mity and a beauty, that makes all the illustrations 
even of Jeffrey, so great a master as he is, sink in 
the comparison. I do not hesitate to declare, that 
the whole history of philosophical criticism, cannot 
furnish an illustration of a subtile theory superior to 
it in all the ends for which illustrations are used. 
The celebrated illustration of Kant in his " Critic 
of Pure Reason," where he compares the human 
reason striving to pass the limits of experience, to a 
dove endeavoring to fly in a vacuum, though the 
most beautiful illustration of a metaphysical sub- 
tilty I can recollect, is not superior to it, either for 
appositeness or beauty. " The buoyant dove, (says 
Kant,) when, with free wing, it traverses the air of 
which it feels the resistance, might imagine that it 
would fly still better in the vacuum beyond ; and 
thus Plato forgets and looks slightingly on the sensible 
world, because it imposes upon his reason such nar- 
row limitations, and so he ventures himself on the 
wings of his ideas, into the empty space of the pure 
understanding." When Dugald Stewart read this 
letter of Burns, he was surprised '' at the distinct 
conception he appeared from it to have formed of the 
general principles of the doctrine of association." But 
I cannot see why he should have been surprised after 
having expressed such an exalted opinion of Burns's 
mind, as he did after seeinsi: him so often. "It is 



174 m ) fi E R T BUR i\ s . 

amusing enough (says Lockliart) to trace the linger- 
mg rehictance of some of these polished scholars ; 
about admitting even to themselves, in his absence, 
what it is certain they all felt sufficiently when they 
were actually in his presence. The extraordinary 
resources Burns displayed in conversation, — the 
strong vigorous sagacity of his observations on life 
and manners, — the splendor of his wit, and the glow- 
ing energy of his eloquence when his feelings were 
stirred, made him the object of serious admiration 
among those practised masters of the art of talk ; 
that galaxy of eminent men of letters, who, in their 
various departments, shed lustre at that period on 
the name of Scotland." The truth is, that Burns 
from his youth, when he read Locke, had been fond 
of metaphysical speculations. And many of his 
most familiar letters abound in the sublimest spec- 
ulations. In fact, in a letter to Mrs. Duniop, writ- 
ten more than two years before the one to Alison, 
he indulges in speculations near akin to those of the 
" Essay on Talk." " We know nothing (says he) 
or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of 
our souls, so cannot account for those seeming ca- 
prices in them that one should be particularly pleased 
with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds 
of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impres- 
sion. I have some favorite flowers in spring, among 
which are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox- 
glove, the wild brier-rose, the budding birch, and the 
hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with 



AS A MAN. 175 

particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary- 
whistle of the curfew in a summer noon, or the 
wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an 
autunmal morning, without feeling an elevation of 
soul like the enthitsiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell 
me, my dear friend, to what can 'this be owing ? 
Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the ^olian 
harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing ac- 
cident ? Or, do these workings argue something 
within us above the trodden clod ? I own myself 
partial to such proofs of those awful and important 
realities, — a God that made all things, — man's im- 
material and immortal nature, — and a world of weal 
or woe beyond death and the grave." And it is 
quite clear that Burns was familiar with the philos- 
ophy of Scotland. This is shown incidentally in his 
familiar writings. In one of his epistles in verse, to 
James Tait, accompanying the works of Smith and 
Reid, which he sent him to read, we find the follow- 
ing lines : — 

" I've sent you here, by Johnnie Tinson, 
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on ! 
Smith wi' his sympathetic feeling, 
An' Reid to common sense appealing. 
Philosophers have fought and wrangled, 
An' meikle Greek an' Latin mangled, 
Till wi' their logic-jargon tir'd, 
An' in the depth of science mir'd, 
To common sense they now appeal, 
What wives and wabsters see and feel." 



176 ROBERT BURNS. 

With what an easy familiarity are the main doc- 
trines of Smith and Reid exhibited! And with 
what admirable satire does he ridicule the doctrines 
which pretend to be based on a refined logic. And 
it is all done with that condensed force of style so 
peculiarly characteristic of Burns's productions. And 
I fully believe, with Dugald Stewart, that Burns 
was " fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition 
he had chosen to exert his abilities." 

It is certainly very remarkable that Burns, amidst 
his laborious avocations, should find time to read 
such works as " Alison on Taste," indulge in such 
speculations as we have just considered, write in- 
numerable songs, and produce " Tam O'Shanter," 
in the two years he had been at Ellisland. But this 
is but a small part of his mental operations. He 
was at this very time projecting poems of a higher 
order than any he had yet produced. He w^as plan- 
ning a great national drama, in which the various 
fortunes of the gallant Bruce were to be exhibited. 
" Those who recollect (says Walter Scott) the mas- 
culine and lofty tone of martial spirit which glows in 
the poem of Bannockburn, will sigh to think what 
the character of the gallant Bruce might have proved 
under the hands of Burns." With a view to prepare 
himself for the task, on the 2nd of March, 1790, he 
writes to his bookseller : — " I want likewise for my- 
self, as you can pick them up, second-handed or 
cheap copies of Otway's dramatic works, Gibber's, 
or any dramatic works of the more modern, Mack- 



AS A MAN. 177 

lin, Garrick, Foote, Colman, or Sheridan. A good 
copy too of MoJiere, in French, I much want. Any 
other good dramatic authors in that language, I 
want also ; but comic authors chiefly, though I 
shoald wish to have Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire 
too." And only a month before this, he had written 
to the same bookseller : — " I will not say one word 
about apologies or excuses for not writing. I am a 
poor, rascally ganger, condemned to gallop at least 
two hundred miles every week to inspect dirty ponds 
and yeasty barrels, and when can I find tune to 
write ? I want Smollett's works for the sake of his 
incomparable humor. I have already Roderick Ran- 
dom, and Humphrey Clinl^er ; Peregrine Pickle, 
Launcelot Greaves, Ferdinand Count Fathom, I 
still want ; but as I said, the veriest copies will 
serve me. I am nice only in the appearance of my 
poets. I forgot the price of Cowper's Poems, but I 
believe I must have them." What intense mental 
activity does all this indicate. It seems incredible 
that Burns could read as much as this demand of 
such an array of books implies. What a commen- 
tary, instructive as it is stringent, on the laziness of 
most men ! But ambition, with high aims, will 
enable a man to accomplish any thing but impossi- 
bilities. 

In this year, 1791, Burns experienced a great af- 
fliction in the loss of his first patron, the Earl of 
Glencairn. It was, as wo have seen, in a great de- 
gree, through the pntn^naize of this generous noble- 

8^^ 



178 ROBERT R URNS. 

man, that Burns succeeded so well with the first 
Edinburgh edition of his poems. And Burns then 
declared, and on all occasions afterwards, that as long 
as a pulse beat in his heart, he would be grateful to 
the Earl of Glencairn. And on his second visit to 
Edinburgh, to settle with bis bookseller, the Earl 
again aided him, which Burns thus notices : — ^' The 
noble Earl of Glencairn took me by the hand to-day, 
and interested himself in my concerns, with a good- 
ness like that benevolent Being whose image he so 
richly bears. He is a stronger proof of the immor- 
tality of the soul than any that philosophy ever pro- 
duced. A mind like his can never die." What a 
noble compliment is this ! The grandest ever paid 
to any man. I glory in recording it, no less on ac- 
count of the noble heart that conceived it, than for 
the purpose of eliciting the praise of every reader of 
these pages for the Earl of Glencairn. 

When the Earl died. Burns wrote to his steward 
to know when the interment would take place. 
*' God knows," says he, " what I have suffered, at 
the loss of my best friend, my first and dearest pa- 
tron and benefactor, the man to whom I owe all that 
I am and have. I am going into mourning for him, 
and with more sincerity of grief than I fear some 
will, who by nature's ties ought to feel on this oc- 
casion. 

" Dare I trouble you to let me know privately, 
before the day of interment, that I may cross the 
country, and steal among the crowd, to pay a tear 



AS A MAN 



179 



to the last sight of my ever revered benefactor ? It 
will oblige me beyond expression." How noble ! 
How infinitely touching I Robert Burns, a man of 
the loftiest genius, stealing among the crowd, to pay 
a tear to the memory of his benefactor ! It is the 
tribute of the heart that conceived this magnificent 
utterance of generosity : — " What, my dear Cun- 
ningham, is there in riches, that they narrow and 
harden the heart so ? I think, that were I as rich 
as the sun, I should be as generous as the day." It 
is no mean tribute to have shed on one's grave a 
tear from the heart of a man that gave utterance to 
so grand a conception of generosity. Such a con- 
ception is evidence of the lofty magnificence of the 
soul of Burns, and throws the highest moral lustre 
over his tribute of sorrow for the Earl of Glencairn. 
But after his great heart had poured its silent tear 
on the grave of his benefactor, and his spirit had re- 
vived, he poured forth all the meaning of that tear 
in immortal verse : — 

" The bridegroom may forget the bride, 

Was made his wedded wife yestreen ; 
The monarch may forget the crown, 

That on his head an hour has been ; 
The mother may forget the child, 

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ; 
But ni remember thee Glencairn, 

And a' that thou hast done for me !" 

Here, genius, in the exercise of its high prerogative, 
has rendered back to its patron, an immortality of 



180 ROBERT BURNS. 

gratitude, that will stand forever in the domain of 
literature, as a monument of the noble generosity 
that assists humble merit. Let wealth ponder on 
this noble lesson, and learn its true dignity I The 
honors conferred by genius, are more enduring than 
those conferred by kings. Glencairn's patents of no- 
bility are poor in honor, when compared with the 
verse of Burns. 

At this time, there was not a man in Scotland, 
who would not have felt himself honored, at having 
Burns as his guest. And he was visited by all ranks. 
The great Glasgow road ran near his residence, and 
he was literally consumed in both his time and his 
substance, by those who called to pay their respects 
to genius. Sir Egerton Brydges speaking of his visit 
says : — " I never conversed with a man who appeared 
to be more warmly impressed with the ]:>eauties of 
nature ; and visions of female beauty seemed to trans- 
port him. He did not merely appear to be a poet at 
casual intervals ; but at every moment a poetical en- 
thusiasm seemed to beat in his veins, and he lived 
all his days, the inward, if not the outward, life of a 
poet. I thought I perceived in Burns's cheek the 
symptoms of an energy which had been pushed too 
far ; and he had this feeling himself Every now 
and then, he spoke of the grave as soon about to close 
over him. His dark eye had at fost a character of 
sternness: but as he became warmed, though this 
did not entirely melt away, it was mingled with 
changes of extreme softness." The blight of disap- 



AS A MAN. 181 

pointed ambition, and the wear and tear of a brave 
spirit most tenderly sensitive, were beginning to be 
seen in the person of Bnras ; and what was worst of 
all, to be felt in his heart. And the trials of life were 
thickening. The future was darker than the past. 
His salary had this year, 1791, been raised to seventy 
pounds : but his farm had proved ruinous to him. 
He had sunk more than half of the proceeds of his po- 
ems. He determined therefore to give up the farm, 
and remove to Dumfries, and endeavor to live on the 
salary of seventy pounds. From this moment, his 
star begins to descend rapidly towards the horizon. 
Of all men he was the least fitted to be a subordi- 
nate official in political station. He was now wholly 
dependent on political favor. We will see the result. 

Having sold his farming utensils and his stock, 
and paid his landlord the rent, and a small sum for 
dilapidations, he moved to Dumfries with his humble 
furniture, into a small house in a neighborhood which 
suited his fancy. Seventy pounds a year to a man 
of his fame, which necessitated him to visits from 
the great, to an extensive correspondence, to a con- 
siderable outlay for books and other expenditures, 
besides the support of his family, could not prevent 
visions of poverty from haunting the fancy of the 
dullest man. 

Soon after Burns went to Dumfries, he was written 
to by George Thomson of Edinburgh, to compose 
songs for a work he was about to publish. Thomson 
from his boyhood, had a passion for music and paint- 



182 ROBERT BURNS. 

ing ; and had now conceived the idea of collecting all 
the best Scottish melodies and songs, and of obtain- 
ing accompaniments to them, worthy of their merit. 
The Scottish melodies were generally without sym- 
phonies to introduce and conclude them; and the 
accompaniments very poor ; and the songs connected 
with them, being the productions of a rude age, were 
often coarse, vulgar, and indelicate. Thomson had 
procured the services of Pleyel, Beethhoven, Weber, 
and Hummell, the first musicians at that time in 
Europe, to compose accompaniments to the airs, 
and symphonies to introduce and conclude them, all 
adapted to the piano-forte, violin, flute, and violin- 
cello. Their work has been pronounced unrivalled 
for originality and beauty. The next thing was to 
procure the services of some one to compose the songs. 
" Fortunately," says Thomson, " for the melodies, I 
turned my eyes towards Robert Burns, who no sooner 
was informed of my plan and wishes, than with all the 
frankness, generosity, and enthusiasm which marked 
his character, he undertook to write whatever songs 
I wanted for my work : but in answer to my promise 
of remuneration, he declared, in the most emphatic 
terms, that he would receive nothing of the kind ! 
He proceeded with the utmost alacrity to execute 
what he had undertaken, and from the year 1792 to 
the time of his death, in 1796, I continued to receive 
his exquisitely beautiful compositions for the melodies 
I had sent him from time to time ; and in order that 
nothing should be wanting, which might suit my 



A S A M A N . 183 

work, he empowered me to make use of all the other 
songs he had written for Johnson's Musical Museum. 
My work thus contains above one hundred and 
twenty of his inimitable songs." Burns in his letter 
in answer to Thomson's request, says : — "I have just 
this moment got your letter. As the request you 
make to me will positively add to my enjoyments in 
complying with it, I shall enter into your undertaking 
with all the small portion of abilities I have, strained 
to the utmost exertion, by the impulse of enthusiasm. 
As to any renumeration, you may think my songs 
either above or below price ; for they shall absolutely 
be one or the other. With the honest enthusiam 
with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk 
of money, wages, fee, hire, &c., would be dowm'ight 
prostitution of soul." 

After Burns had been contributinsf sons^s for nearly 
a year, Thomson sent him the first book of the songs, 
which had just been published, and by way of re- 
miuneration, sent also, a five pound note, with a prom- 
ise of more. Burns thus acknowledges it : — "I assure 
you, my dear sir, that you truly hurt me with your 
pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my own eyes. 
However, to return it, would savor of affectation ; 
but as to any more traffic of that debtor and creditor 
kind, T swear, by that Honor, which crowns the up- 
right statue of Robert Burns's integrity, — on the 
least motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by- 
past transaction, and from that moment commence 
entire stranger to you I" This is a tone not to be 



184 ROBERT BURNS. 

misunderstood. Burns in the nobleness of his soul, 
had entered into the project from generosity, and 
by that impulse alone would he carry through his 
work. I love the man. My soul magnifies itself, in 
sympathy with his noble nature. He had under- 
taken to do an act of generosity, and he spurned the 
idea of being paid for it. 

" Awa ye selfish war'ly race, 
Wha think that havins, sense, and grace, 
Ev'n love an' friendship, should give place 

To catch-the-plack ! 
I dinna like to see your face, 

Nor hear your crack. 

But ye whom social pleasure charms, 
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms, 
Who hold your being on the terms, 

Each aid the others. 
Come to my bowl, come to my arms. 

My friends, my brothers !" 

In the letters of Burns to Thomson, accompany- 
ing the songs, there is a good deal of fine criticism. 
What Burns had undertaken, was a task of extra- 
ordinary difficulty : to write words to such a vari- 
ety of airs. " There is (says Burns) a peculiar 
rhythmus in many of our airs, and a necessity of 
adapting syllables to the emphasis, or what I would 
call the feature-notes of the tune, that cramps the 
poet, and lays him under almost insuperable difficul- 
ties." In another letter he tells how he overcame 
these difficulties. " Until I am complete master of 



I 



AS A MAN. 185 

a tune, in my own singing, (such as it is,) I can 
never compose for it. My way is : I consider the 
poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the 
musical expression ; then choose my theme ; begin a 
stanza — when that is composed, which is generally 
the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, 
sit down now and then, look out for objects in na- 
ture round me, that are in unison or harmony with 
the cogitations of my fancy, and worJvings of my 
bosom ; humming every now and then the air, with 
the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse 
beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of 
my study, and then commit my effusions to paper ; 
swinging at intervals on the hind-legs of my elbow- 
chair, by way of calling forth my own critical stric- 
tures, as my pen goes on. Seriously ! this at home, 
is almost invariably my way." Any one, of the 
least knowledge of the art of composition, must see 
at once, the extreme difficulty of writing verses, 
containing not only a rhythm, but sentiments also, 
suitable to such a variety of measures. But noth- 
ing in the art of versification was beyond the genius 
of Burns. He was one of its greatest masters. 
And he has given us here the very plan by which he 
caught the sentiment of the musical expression, and 
then embodying it in words, wove it in with the 
tune. Dr. Walcot, who had promised Thomson to 
WTite songs for his works, complained to Thomson, 
of the difficulty of composing verses suitable to some 
of the airs. Thomson tells Burns of it in one of his 



186 ^ ROBERT BURNS. 

letters, — " That eccentric bard Peter Pindar, has 
stated, I know not how many difficulties about 
writing for the airs I sent him, because of the pecu- 
liarity of their measure, and the trammels they im- 
pose on his flying Pegasus. I subjoin for your peru- 
sal, the only one I have yet got from him, being for 
the fine air, ' Lord Gregory.' " And this was the 
only one he ever did get from Walcot. The difficul- 
ties were too much for him. 

In this correspondence Burns has thrown a good 
deal of light upon the true theory of art, as I have 
endeavored to exhibit it in my criticism on the poetry 
of Burns. In speaking of the song, " The Banks of 
the Dee,'- he says, " The song is well enough, but 
has some false imagery in it, for instance, — 

' And sweetly the nightingale sung from the iree.'^ 

In the first place, the nightingale sings from a low 
bush, but never from a tree ; and in the second 
place, there never was a nightingale seen or heard 
on the banks of the Dee, or on the banks of any 
other river in Scotland. Exotic rural imagery is 
always comparatively flat." Here Burns enunci- 
ates by example, the great fundamental principle of 
art : conformity to truths or the faithful statement 
of facts in nature. It is just as absurd to divorce 
art from nature, as it is to divorce philosophy from 
nature. In art, truth and beauty are inseparably 
allied. Just in proportion as the artist deviates from 



\ 



AS A MAN. J.87 

nature, just so far is his work false, and defective in 
beauty. The highest beauty is only compatible 
with the highest truth. And in exact proportion as 
our knowledge of nature increases, must the truth- 
fulness of art increase. As the sciences advance, 
art must be informed of their truths in order to con- 
form its productions to them, else they will disgust 
the intelligent with their ignorant incongruities. 
Burns had a clear conception of the truth that art 
must conform to nature ; and he not only exempli- 
fies it in his poetry, but he insists upon it through- 
out his correspondence with Thomson. " One hint 
let me give you — whatever Mr. Pleyel does, let him 
(says Burns) not alter one iota of the original Scot- 
tish airs ; I mean in the song department ; but let 
our national music preserve its native features. 
They are, I own, frequently wikl, and irreducible to 
the more modern rules ; but on that very eccen- 
tricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect." 
Burns considered these airs the true musical expres- 
sion of nature's instincts, untaught and untram- 
melled by artificial rules, and therefore in truth the 
highest art. And besides, it w^as purely a national 
work of Scottish music and song, that they were 
endeavoring to build up, and he determined that its 
true character should be preserved. Therefore, in 
his very first letter to Thomson he says, — " If you 
are for English verses, there is, on my part, an 
end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity of the 
ballad or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to 



188 ROBERT BURNS. 

please myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling 
of our native tongue." In another letter, he says : — 
" There is a naivete^ a pastoral simplicity in a slight 
intermixture of Scots words and phraseology which 
is more in unison, (at least to my taste, and I will 
add, to every Caledonian taste,) with the simple pa- 
thos, or rustic sprightliness of our native music, 
than any English verses whatever." So severe was 
Burns in his notions of conformity of art to nature, 
or truth, that he intended to revise his songs, and 
change all the foreign names for native ones, and 
rely on the Marys, the Jeans, and other native 
names, to influence the hearts of Scotsmen. ''In 
my by-past songs, (says he,) I dislike one thing, the 
name Chloris. I meant it as the fictitious name of 
a certain lady ; but on second thoughts, it is a high 
incongruity to have a Greek appellation to a Scot- 
tish pastoral ballad." 

Besides contributing so many songs, Burns agreed 
to write an appendix of anecdotes about the songs, 
to an Essay on Scotch music which Dr. Beattie 
had promised as an introduction to Thomson's work. 
" I mean (says he) to draw up an appendix to the 
doctor's essay, containing my stock of anecdotes, 
&c., of our Scots songs. All the late Mr. Ty tier's 
anecdotes I have by me, taken down in the course 
of my acquaintance with him, from his own mouth. 
I am such an enthusiast, that in the course of my 
several peregrinations through Scotland, I made a 
pilgrimage to the individual spot from which every 



AS A MAN. 189 

song took its rise, " Lochabar," and the '' Braes of 
Ballenden," excepted. So far as the locality, either 
from the title of the air, or the tenor of the song, 
could be ascertained, I have paid my devotions at the 
particular shrine of every Scots muse." 

All this appears rather the work of a scholar of 
literary ease, than of an exciseman riding two hun- 
dred miles a w^eek in search of smugglers, and others 
defrauding the excise. " The labors of the excise 
(says Cunningham) now and then led him along a 
barren line of sea-coast, extending from Caerlaverock 
Castle, where the Maxwells dwelt of old, to Annan 
Water. This district fronts the coast of England ; 
and from its vicinity to the Isle of Man, was in 
those days infested with daring smugglers, who 
poured in brandy, Holland gin, tea, tobacco, and 
salt in vast quantities. Small farmers and persons 
engaged in inland traffic, diffused the commodities 
through the villages ; they were generally vigorous 
and daring fellows, in whose hearts a ganger or two 
bred no dismay. They were well mounted, ac- 
quainted with the use of a cutlass, an oak sapling, 
or a whip loaded with lead ; and when mounted be- 
tween a couple of brandy-kegs, and their horses' 
heads turned to the hills, not one exciseman in ten 
dared to stop them. To prevent the disembarkation 
of rum-goods, when a smuggling craft made its ap- 
pearance, was a duty to which the poet was liable 
to be called ; and many a darksome hour he was 
compelled to keep watch, that the peasantry might 



190 ROBERT B U R N S . 

not have the pleasure of drinking tea and brandy 
duty free." Such was the official avocation of Burns. 
And frequently by night, as well as by day, was he 
galloping along the sands of Solway in search of 
smugglers. And it was sometimes in these rides, 
and sometimes at some place where he put up for 
the night, that he composed his songs. He thus 
writes to Thomson : — " You cannot have any idea 
of the predicament in which I write to you. In the 
course of my duty as superior, (in which capacity 
I have acted of late,) I came here yesternight to 
this unfortunate, wicked little village. I have gone 
forward, but snows of ten feet deep have impeded 
my progress : I have tried to '' gae back the gate I 
cam again," but the same obstacle has shut me up 
within insuperable bars. To add to my misfortune, 
since dinner, a scraper has been torturing cat-gut, in 
sounds that would have insulted the dying agonies 
of a sow under the hands of a butcher, and thinks 
himself, on that very account, exceeding good com- 
pany." This surely was a fine condition for poetic 
inspiration. Yet, amidst such turmoil. Burns was 
still a poet. 

We come now to what, to me, is the most pain- 
ful incident in the life of Burns. A new era had 
opened in the civilization of Europe. The spirit of 
progress had overthrown the monarchy of France, 
and was everywhere scrutinizing the rightfulness 
and utility of monarchical institutions. This made 
governments extremely jealous. They gave a will- 



AS A I\l A N . 



191 



ing ear to every spy who, with serpentine stealthi- 
ness and treachery, would steal into the confidential 
privacies of society, and catch hasty expressions, and 
exaggerating them into incipient treason, report them 
to government, often for no better reward than the 
being permitted to approach, though in servile 
crouching, near to the pomp of office. One of these 
creatures, or perhaps some fellow who had, for some 
act of puppyism, felt the lash of Burns's sarcasm, 
whispered into the ear of authority, that Burns was 
disaffected to government. The Commissioners of 
excise accordingly gave an order for inquiry into his 
conduct. At this time, his health was delicate from 
the toilsome labors of his life, from recent pecuniary 
losses, from the incessant activity of his mind, and 
the gloomy future that was blackening over his 
path. No man, too, ever prided himself more upon 
the independence of his character. He was even 
extravagant in this sentiment. It may well then be 
imagined, how his proud and deeply sensitive heart 
recoiled at succumbing to the inquisition of the min- 
ions of authority, who, as men, were hardly fit to 
tie the latchets of his shoes. In the first impulse of 
indignation, restrained by the fear for the helpless- 
ness of his family, he wrote the following letter 
to his friend Graham of Fintry, who was one of 
the Commissioners :— '• I have been surprised, con- 
founded, and thstracted, by Mr. Mitchell the collec- 
tor, telling me that he has received an order from 
your Board, to inquire into my political conduct, 



192 ROBERT BURI^iS. 

and blaming me a^ a person disafleoted to govern- 
ment. 

'' Sir, you are a husband and a father. You 
know what you w^ould feel to see the much-loved 
wife of your bosom, and your helpless, prattling lit- 
tle ones turned adrift into the world, degraded and 
disgraced from a situation in which they had been 
respectable and respected, and left almost without 
the necessary support of a miserable existence. 
Alas ! sir, must I think that such soon will be ray 
lot? and from the d d, dark insinuations of hell- 
ish, groundless envy too I I believe, sir, I may aver 
it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that I would not 
tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse 
horrors, if worse can be, than those I have mentioned, 
hung over my head ; and I say that the allegation, 
whatever villain has made it, is a lie ! To the Brit- 
ish constitution, on revolution principles, next after 
my God, I am most devoutly attached. You sir, 
have been much and generously my friend ; Heaven 
knows how warmly I have felt the obligation, and 
how gratefully I have thanked you. Fortune, sir, 
has made you powerful and me impotent ; has given 
you patronage and me dependence. I would not, 
for my single self, call on your humanity ; were 
such my insular, unconnected situation, I would 
despise the tear that now swells in my eye — I could 
brave misfortune, I could face ruin ; for at the worst 
^ Death's thousand doors stand open ;' but, good 
God I the tender concerns that I have mentioned, 



ASA MAN. 193 

the claims and ties tliat I see at this moment, and 
feel around me, how they unnerve courage and 
wither resolution ! To your patronage, as a man 
of some genius, you have allowed me a claim ; and 
your esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due. 
To these, sir, permit me to appeal ; by these may I 
adjure you to save me from that misery which 
threatens to overwhelm me, and which, with my 
latest breath I will say it, I have not deserved." 

Thus, in the private ear of friendship, did Burns 
mingle the tenderness of his domestic sympathies 
with the fiery indignation of his insulted feelings. 
But in his official communication to the Board, 
which his friend Graham laid before them, he stood 
upon a flat denial of the accusations ; but with the 
boldness of a manly heart, he said, if he must speak 
out, that there was corruption in the government, 
" In my defence (says Burns) to their accusations, 
I said that whatever might be my sentiments of re- 
publics, ancient or modern, as to Britain, I abjured 
the idea. That a constitution which in its original 
principles experience had proved to be in every way 
fitted for our happiness in society, it would be in- 
sanity to sacrifice to an untried visionary theory. 
That in consideration of my being situated in a de- 
partment, however humble, immediately in the 
hands of people in power, I had forborne taking an 
active part, either personally or as an author, in the 
present business of reform. But that where I must 
declare my sentiments, I would say there existed a 
9 



194 ROBERT BUR i\S. *" 

system of corruption between the executive power 
and the representative part of the legislature, which 
boded no good to our glorious constitution, and which 
every patriotic Briton must wish to see amended." 
This bold charge of corruption against the govern- 
ment gave great offence, and Burns would have 
been dismissed but for his friend Graham, who re- 
strained the Board from his removal. The Board, 
however, directed that he be informed, "That his 
business was to act, not to think ; and that what- 
ever might be men or measures, it was for him to be 
silent and obedient.'''' 

I cannot find words scornful enough to express 
my contempt for those little vulgar officials, who 
could with such swinish indifference trample upon 
the great sensitive heart of Robert Burns. He not 
to think I A man gifted with the very largest ca- 
pacity of thought. He to be silent and obedient I 
A man endowed with the most divine power of 
speech of any Briton of the age ; and with a spirit 
of freedom and bravery that makes him an example 
which sheds lustre on the very name of man. He 
to be a mere official menial ! whose endowments 
were such as to make him " a stronger proof of the 
immortality of the soul than any that philosophy 
ever produced." His country and the world have 
scorned the drivelling idiocy of the command. " Does 
any man (says Burns) tell me that my feeble efforts 
can be of no service ; and that it does not belong to 
inv humble station to meddle with the concerns of 



A M A N . 



195 



a nation ? I can tell him, that it is on such individ- 
uals as I that a nation has to rest, both for the hand 
of support and the eye of intelligence. The unin- 
formed 'mob may swell a nation's bulk, and the 
titled, tinsel, courtly throng may be its feathered 
ornament ; but the number of those who are ele- 
vated enough in life to reason and to reflect, yet low 
enough to keep clear of the venal contagion of a 
court — these are a nation's strength!" Thus did 
Burns defend, with manly independence, both his 
person and his position. 

This transaction affected Burns deeply, and has 
been thought by some to have hastened his steps to 
a premature gi'ave. He felt now that all hope of 
promotion in office was gone. " All men's eyes (says 
Lockhart) were upon Burns. He was the standing 
marvel of the place ; his toasts, his jokes, his epigrams, 
his songs, were the daily food of conversation and 
scandal; and he, open and careless, and thinking 
many of his superiors had not the least objection to 
hear and to applaud, soon began to be considered, 
among the local admirers and disciples of the good 
king and his great minister, as the most dangerous 
of all the apostles of sedition, and to be shunned ac- 
cordingly." All who had any hope of office shunned 
him. And the aristocracy of the district treated him 
with marked coldness ; and Dumfries being a hive 
of toryism, he was cut oft' from much social sympa- 
thy. If at this time, his position had been such, as 
to enable him to have gratified his oft expressed de- 



196 ROBERT BURNS. 

sire, for a place in the House of Commons, the world 
would now know the unuttered thunders of speech, 
that then burnt in the great furnace of Burns's heart. 
For I agree with Carlyle, that he had the faculties 
of a Mirabeau. What might we not expect from 
those great conversational powers, when exerted in 
parliamentary declamation and harangue ? How 
would 

" Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour 
Like Hecla streaming thunder." 

At this time too, there was an under-current of 
detraction against Burns's moral character, flowing 
secretly through society, and added to every day by 
the venom spite from some heart where it had been 
rankling in the chambers of cowardice. He was rep- 
resented as given up to hard drink. Now, if there 
be any one thing in which the firmness of Burns 
will be remarkably displayed, it was the success with 
which he escaped drunkenness. At that time, Scot- 
land was one of the hardest-drinking countries in the 
world. All classes drank freely ; and the gentlemen 
and nobility were addicted to great excesses. " The 
fact is (says Hogg) those who accuse Burns of drunk- 
enness, know nothing about the history of drmik- 
enness in Scotland at all. Let them look at the 
character of the Baron of Bradwardine in one age, 
and of Hugh Jenks in another, by Sir Walter Scott, 
and they will find the epitome of drinking in those 
days drawn to the life. About the beginning of the 



AS A MAN. 1" ' 



k^t century and for some time previous, drinkmg 
among the ' nobility, and first-rate gentry of Scot- 
land, was carried to a very great height." Burns 
was exposed in a pre-eminent degree to the conta- 
gion of this practice, from the time, at the age oi 
nineteen, " he learned to fill his glass, and to mix 
without fear in a drunken squabble" with the smug- 
glers near the school where he then was, up to the 
day of his death. He was the greatest of all convivial 
companions. His broad humor, his briUiant wit, his 
electric flashes of repartee, his lofty eloquence, his dar- 
ing imaginings, his facetious fancies, his impromptu 
catches of poetry, his memory filled with newly- 
composed songs, suited to any occasion, made him 
altogether incomparable as a conviviahst. He was 
sought after by all classes. In the country, m the 
towns, at Edinburgh, every-body was anxious to 
have at their feasts the man whose common conver- 
sation made ostlers and waiters at inns get out of bed 
to hear it, made philosophers and the literati gather 
around him in amazement, and carried jewelled Duch- 
esses off their feet. And he, with a heart " as rich 
as the sun and as generous as the day," could not 
but be glad to exert powers which must have affbrded 
him as much pleasure, as they gave delight to his 
enthralled auditors. All who have any soul, know 
how deUghtful is the exercise of our intellectual and 
emotional faculties, when rapt to their highest pitch, 
by the sympathy caught from the emotions of those 
^vhom we are lifting from the dnlness of common 



198 ROBERT BURNS. 

feelings, into the enthusiasm of the lofty sentiment 
of generous sympathy. Burns possessed all this in 
a super-eminent degree. And it was impossible for a 
man of his peculiar endowments to keep out of the 
magic circle of social entertainment where all were, 
with glad hearts and bright countenances, enthusias- 
tically welcoming him, as the guest of guests. He 
was all his life, as his letters show, complaining of 
" this savage hospitality which knocks a man down 
with liquor," to use his own language. At the very 
time of which I am now writing, in a letter to Mrs. 
Dunlop, he says : — " Occasional hard drinking is the 
devil to me. Against this, I have again and again 
bent my resolution, and have greatly succeeded. 
Taverns I have totally abandoned : it is the private 
parties in the family way, among the hard-drinking 
gentlemen of this country, that do me the mischief 
— but even this I have more than half given over." 

But Findlater, a gentleman connected with the 
excise, has long since disarmed history of the false- 
hood which I am combating. " My connection 
(says he) with Burns, commenced immediately after 
his admission to the excise, and continued to the 
hour of his death. In all that time, the superintend- 
ence of his behavior, as an officer of the revenue, 
was a branch of my especial province, and I was not 
an inattentive observer of the general conduct of a 
man and a poet so celebrated by his countrymen. 
He was exemplary in his attention, and was even 
jealous of the imputation on his negligence. It was 



AS A MAN. 199 

not till near the latter end of his days, that there 
was any falling off in this respect ; and this was 
well accounted for by the pressure of disease and ac- 
cumulating infnmities. I will farther avow, that I 
never saw him, — which was very frequently while 
at ElHsland, and still more so, almost every day 
after he removed to Dumfries, — in hours of business, 
but he was quite himself, and capable of discharging 
the duties of his office ; nor was he ever known to 
drink by himself, or seen to indulge in liquor in a 
forenoon. I have seen Burns in all his various 
phases, — in his convivial moments, in his sober 
moods, and in the bosom of his family. Indeed, I 
believe I saw more of him, than any other individual 
had occasion to see, and I never beheld any thing 
like the gross enormities with which he has been 
charged. That when he sat down in the evening 
with friends whom he liked, he was apt to prolong 
the social hours beyond the bounds which prudence 
would dictate, is unquestionable : but in his family, 
I will venture to say, he was never seen otherwise 
than as attentive and affectionate in a high degree." 
And Gray, a gentleman of education, who was then 
teacher in Dumfries, says : — '' It came under my 
own view professionally, that Burns superintended 
the education of his children with a degree of care 
that I have never seen surpassed. In the bosom 
of his family he spent many an hour, directing 
the studies of his eldest son, a boy of uncommon 
talents. I have frequently found him explaining to 



200 ROBERT BURNS. 

this youth, then not more than nine years of age, the 
poets from Shakspeare to Grey, or storing his mind 
with examples of heroic virtue, as they live in the 
pages of the English historian. I could ask any 
person of common candor, if employments like these 
are consistent with habitual drunkenness ?" But 
there arc facts which are even stronger than these 
testimonies. During this time, besides his labors 
and his care of his children's education, he was writ- 
ing songs for both the works before mentioned, and 
was also correcting a new edition of his poems. In 
a letter to James Johnson, dated in the time I am 
considering, he says : — " You should have heard 
from me long ago : but over and above some vexa- 
tious share in the pecuniary losses of these accursed 
times, I have all this winter been plagued with low 
spirits and blue devils, so that I have almost hung 
my harp on the willows. 

*' I am just now busy correcting a new edition of 
my poems, and this, with my ordinary business, 
finds me in full employment. 

" I send you by my friend, Mr. Wallace, forty- 
one songs for your fifth volume ; if we cannot finish 
ill any other way, what would you think of Scots 
words to some beautiful Irish airs ?" Is this the oc- 
cupation of a drunkard ? Forty-one songs ! sent at 
one time, — some original, — some doubtless only old 
songs remodelled. But it is almost incredible that 
Burns could find time to perform so much mental 
labor. If he had nothing but literary leisure, one 



A. S A MAN. 



201 



would think it a great deal to accomplish, with the 
constant reading he was carrying on, with a view to 
poetical labors of a different cast from his earlier 
productions. 

But this mighty intellect was soon to give over 
its labors in this world. His failing health, his pov- 
erty, his increasing family, the education of his chil- 
dren, the comparative neglect of the world, all were 
fast hurrying Burns to the grave. One of the great- 
est sources of consolation to his wounded spirit, was 
now, as it had always been, correspondence with his 
female friends. He continued till his death, to cor- 
respond with many of the most accomplished ladies 
of Scotland. In a letter to Clarinda, with whom 
he still corresponded, he says of his friend Ainslie, 
who made the Highland tour with him : — •' I had a 
letter from him a while ago, but it was so dry, so 
distant, so like a card to one of his clients, that I 
could scarce bear to read it, and have not yet an- 
swered it.. He is a good honest fellow, and can 
write a friendly letter, which would do equal honor 
to his head and his heart, as a whole sheaf of his 
letters which I have by me will witness ; and though 
Fame does not blow her trumpet at my approach 
noio as she did then, when he first honored me with 
his friendship, yet I am as proud as ever ; and when 
I am laid in the grave, I wish to be stretched out at 
fall length, that I may occupy every inch of ground 
I have a right to." Thus did the proud and lofty 
S])irit of Burns rear itself above all disaster, all neg- 



202 ROBE R T BURNS. 

lect of the ^A'orld, and in the loftiness of its concep- 
tions make all feel the grandeur of his nature. But 
strong as he always was in hope, he clearly saw that 
the bow of promise was growing fainter and fainter 
on the dark clouds of the future. In the autumn 
of 1795 he lost his only daughter, which was a se- 
vere affliction to his tender heart. And he poured 
forth his grief in verse : — 

" Oh still I behold thee, all lovely in death, 
Reclin'd on the lap of thy mother, 
When the tear trickl'd bria:ht, when the short stifl'd breath, 
Told how dear ye were aye to each other." 

And soon after this sad event, his own health so 
rapidly declined, all began to feel that he w^as soon 
to enter on the realities of another world. In a let- 
ter, dated 26th June, 1796, he says : — " Alas, Clarke ! 
I begin to fear the worst. As to my individual self, 
I am tranquil, and would despise myself if I were 
not ; but Burns's poor widow, and half-a-dozen of his 
dear little ones, helpless orphans ! — there I am weak 
as a woman's tear. Enough of this : — 'tis half of 
my disease !" On the 4th of July, 1796, he says, in 
a letter to Johnson, inquiring about the Musical 
Museum : — '' Many a merry meeting this publication 
has given us, and possibly it may give us more, 
though, alas I I fear it. This protracting, slow, con- 
suming illness, which hangs over me, will, I doubt 
much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before he 
has well reached his middle career ; and will turn over 



AS A MAN. 203 

the poet to far more important concerns, than study- 
ing the brilliancy of wit, or the pathos of sentiment ! 
However, hope is the cordiil of the human heart, 
and I endeavor to cherish it as well as I can." Two 
or three days after the date cf this letter. Burns went 
to a place on the sea-shore, called The Brow, to try 
the effect of sea-bathing. The beautiful and accom- 
plished Mrs. Riddle, was then near The Brow, for 
health. As soon as she heard that Burns had ar- 
rived there, she sent her carriage for him, and invited 
him to dine with her. '' I was struck," says she, 
" with his appearance on entering the room ; the 
stamp of death was upon his features. He seemed 
already touching the brink of eternity. His first 
words were, — 'Well, madam, have you any com- 
mands for the other world ?' I replied, that it seemed 
a doubtful case which of us should be there the soon- 
est, and that I hoped he would yet live to write my 
epitaph. He looked into my face with an air of great 
kindness, and expressed his concern at seeing me 
look so ill, with his usual sensibility. At table, he 
ate little or nothing, and he complained of having 
entirely lost the tone of his stomach. We had a 
long and serious conversation about his present state, 
and the approaching termination of all his earthly 
prospects. He spoke of his death with firmness as 
well as feeling, as an event likely to happen very 
soon, and which gave him con oern, chiefly from leav- 
ing his four children so young and unprotected ; and 
his wife in the hourly expectation of giving him a 



204 ROBERT BURNS. 

fifth. He showed great concern about the care of 
his literary fame, and particularly the publication of 
his posthumous works. He said he was well aware 
that his death would occasion some noise, and that 
every scrap of his writings would be revived against 
him, to the injury of his future reputation ; that let- 
ters and verses, written with unguarded freedom, 
would be handed about by vanity or malevolence, 
when no dread of his resentment would restrain them, 
nor prevent malice or envy from pouring forth their 
venom to blast his fame. The conversation was kept 
up with great animation and earnestness on his side. 
I had seldom seen his mind greater, or more collected. 
There was frequently a great degree of vivacity in 
his sallies, and they would probably have had a greater 
share, had not the concern and dejection I could not 
disguise, damped the spirit of pleasantry he seemed 
willing to indulge. We parted about sunset, on the 
evening of the 5th of July : the next day I saw him 
again ; and we parted to meet no more." How in- 
teresting are these reminiscences ! The great soul, 
who had consecrated so many common things to im- 
mortality, by imparting to them the ideal hues of 
poetry, — who had raised to more than the glory of a 
queen, the peasant girl, whose charms had won his 
love, — is about to hang up his magic harp on the 
silent walls of his humble dwelling, never more to be 
touched by that hand, which had drawn from its 
strings, strains that, through all time, must ravish 
the heart of man. And oh, if when he hung up that 



AS A MAN. 205 

harp, knowing that his own ear was never again to 
hear its strains, he could but have known, that his 
wife and children would be saved from the distresses 
of poverty, how contented would that heart have 
been, which was now "as weak as a woman's tear." 
How willingly would he have entered upon those 
" far more important concerns, than studying the 
brilliancy of wit or the pathos of sentiment." But, 
alas ! that country which he so dearly loved, saw her 
noblest and her fondest son realize in the last ebbings 
of his heart, the sad truth, 

" Dearly bought, the hidden treasure, 
Finer feelings can bestow, 
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, 
Thrill the deepest notes of woe." 

Burns, in the true generosity of his heart, had 
when he was about to be married, loaned to his 
brother Gilbert half of the proceeds of his poems, and 
his ill success with his farm had sunk the other half. 
He was now dying in abject poverty. And not only 
had he yearnings over the sad lot of his wife and 
children, but, as we have seen, his reputation, 
which a noble ambition had built up, was now his 
anxious concern. Oh, could but his country have 
realized its duty, how many a pang would have 
been spared to the heart of her greatest and tender est 
son I 

Burns continued at the Brow until the 16th of 
July, when he wrote as follows to his wife : — 



206 ROBERT BURNS. 

" My DEAREST LOVE I I delayed writing until I could 
tell you what effect sea-bathing was likely to produce. 
It would be injustice to deny that it has eased my 
pains, and I think has strengthened me. My appe- 
tite is extremely bad. I will see you on Sunday. 
Your affectionate husband, 

Robert Burns." 

Finding that he was sinking, Burns determined to 
hasten home, that his spirit might dw^ell amidst those 
it loved best, for its few remaining moments of earth. 
On the 18th July he reached home, so feeble that he 
could scarcely walk from the carriage to his house. 
But alas ! he had come not to a home of peace, where 
he might repose in the smiles of her whom he loved, 
for the few moments he was to dwell on earth. 
His wife was hourly expecting to be confined ; and 
was without a friend. In the agony of his dying 
heart, he wrote to his wife's father : — " Do for heav- 
en's sake send Mrs. Armour here immediately. My 
wife is hourly expected to be put to bed. Good 
God ! What a situation for her to be in, poor girl, 
without a friend ! I returned from sea-bathing 
quarters to-day, and my medical friends would al- 
most persuade me that I am better, but I think and 
feel that my strength is so gone, that the disorder 
will prove fatal to me. Your son-in-law, R. B." 
What a sad lot is this for him who had written the 
*' Cotter's Saturday Night." The visions of fancy 
could no longer cheer the drooping spirit. The great 



AS A MAN. 207 

poet lies on the bed of death ; and her whose counte- 
nance ever beamed with love for him, does not sit be- 
side him to cheer him with her last smile. He dies 
alone from her bosom. On the 21st of July, 1796, 
in the morning, the great soul of Robert Burns saw 
the last of earth. 

Here let us pause, and look back over the life of 
this remarkable man ! How glorious in some re- 
spects, and how gloomy in others, are its vicissi- 
tudes ! How much to praise, how much to censure : 
but still take him all in all, it must be admitted that 
Robert Burns was one of the noblest specimens of 
humanity. Glorious in his intellectual character, 
magnanimous in his moral, we praise him for his 
greatness, and we sympathize in his weakness. Not 
many men have contributed more to the happiness 
of their country. There are in Scotland but few fire- 
sides, where the songs of Burns are not sung every 
evening, diffusing through the heart, the sweetness 
of spiritual pleasure, and refining the sensibilities, 
by the purifying sympathy with generous sentiment. 
And his country, now when the poet himself no 
longer dwells on earth, appreciates his greatness, in 
the power of the spell in which his poetry holds the 
universal Scottish heart. In continually increasing 
power of expression, has Scotland been speaking 
forth her love for Burns, from his death, to this mo- 
ment. On the hills of Edinburgh, a noble monu- 
ment, with a statue of the poet, by Flaxman, has 
been reared to his fame, bv the side of monuments 



208 ROBERT BURNS. 

to Playfair and to Stewart. And in his own native 
Ayrshire, by the humble cot where the Ught of na- 
ture first shed its glories upon the eyes of the boy, a 
monument has been built to tell how the heart of 
Scotland yearns over that spot. But these dumb 
monuments could not speak out the full heart of 
Scotland. The nation laboring under the burden it 
felt upon its heart, for the neglect it had shown its 
noble son, determined to speak out from its own bo- 
som, in one voice, all that it felt. In July, 1844, on 
the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Burns, Scot- 
land, as if moved by the pulsation of one heart, cel- 
ebrated the day by a grand festival at the spot where 
Burns was born. Streams of population poured to the 
spot from every corner of Scotland. The hills, the 
valleys, and the whole country round about, were 
thronged with the people hastening to the birth-place 
of the poet. Trains of cars after trains of cars, were 
linked to the groaning engines, until they almost re- 
fused to move, to hasten the people onward. And 
from the margin of the hills about Ayr, the pano- 
rama of the sea with the steamboats looming in the 
distance, told that the people were coming. And 
now the multitudes were assembled to eighty thou- 
sand souls. A hundred bands deafened the very 
heavens with a crash of music. And the multi- 
tudes, with a voice of the sea, sung " Ye Banks and 
Braes o' Bonnie Doon," until all the air seemed to 
be music. And Wilson pronounced a noble eulogy 
on the character of the poet. The peer, the senat-or, 



X 



AS A MAN. 209 

the historian, the poet, the peasant, the artisan, the 
great and the small, the lettered and the simple of 
the land, had all assembled, after fifty years' silence, 
to unite in deep and sincere homage to the genius 
of one humble man. And two of the sons of the 
poet were there, and his sister, as invited guests to 
the banquet of glory. And thus, on that day did 
Scotland speak, from the fulness of the heart, her 
love for Robert Burns. 



THE END. 



D74 891 














.^«.v -^Z ..^^W^-; ^^ ^^ - 



<^ 



vr^'S. 



















M e 




^- ^^'% 









A°^ 













.-^^ ^.^^.*. ..^ r..' v^^>^.. ^^^ ^4-^ .^^W/u^<^ 



O"*" ^^^^^n^*- ^O Treatment Date: March 2009 





Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 






o ^ PreservationTechnologies 

** A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



///) <J "•>'. ..V- 



l\ 






r * «, '^^ 



• < 1 






•,'• 







K 















HECKMAN |±l 

BINDERY INC. |m| 

j^ JAN 89 







N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 



Ao. 



>^^ 






